A Case for Teleportation

I hate traveling. Actually, let me re-phrase that, I love my destinations—especially this trip to Honduras, which was exactly the trip I was hoping it to be—I just hate getting there and back again. That was certainly the case when my Tuesday travel back to New York seeped into my Wednesday.

It started as most travel days do for me, I woke up early, showered, and threw all my stuff in my suitcase. I checked my email and, little to my surprise, I had an email from Delta saying my flight was delayed—only half an hour. But when I emerged from my room for breakfast, my girlfriend's sister said that apparently the Tegucigalpa airport was closed for the next week due to some repairs. That would have been good for Delta to have told me a month ago when I made the reservation, let alone that morning when they said I'd only be delayed a half hour. So I dug around online and found that sure enough the Tegucigalpa airport had scheduled the repairs a month in advance, but apparently had failed to mention it to the airlines who had to land there. Long story short, I think under the pressure of a potential lawsuit, the airport officials did whatever needed to be done to get the airport passably operational so my flight could take off—two hours later than originally scheduled.

I then had to connect in Atlanta. Bad weather had forced us to maintain a holding pattern for about an hour, so we arrived three hours later than originally scheduled. Of course, the bad weather also delayed my departure to New York, so I wasn't rushed through customs. The big board initially said my flight was pushed to 11:10 from 9:30pm. Ok, I thought. This way I can get some dinner and watch some of the All-Star game. I found a place close to my gate, ordered a sandwich and a beer and picked up the game in the third inning. I talked to a sufficiently-inebriated guy who had been trying to get home to his wife and kid in Phoenix since 6pm—after four weeks digging up WWII-era chemical debris from an Army compound in the Atlanta area. He was soon replaced by a professional bass-fisherman, who was trying to get from Little Rock, Ark. to Las Vegas (via Atlanta?) for a fishing trade show. He had been traveling since 6am. I was beginning to detect a pattern.

I checked out of the conversations and the game just after the sixth inning to go catch my flight, only to find that my gate was only just now seating a much-delayed flight to Denver. Fearing a gate change, I asked the woman at the desk and she assured me I was in the right place and that my flight had now been pushed back to 11:25. Enough time to go to the bathroom and get some reading material for the flight. When I emerged from the newsstand with the latest copy of the New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly ("homework"), I checked the big board once more. JFK...JFK...JFK...Ah, JFK...1:00?!?!?! Yes, my flight was scheduled to leave Atlanta one hour after it was initially scheduled to land in New York. So I returned to the bar to discover that just after I had left Brian McCann drove in three on a bases-clearing double in the top of the seventh and my bass-fisher buddy had been replaced by a woman trying to get from Minneapolis to San Diego, via Indianapolis and Atlanta (not all in the same day), who was sharing the same delayed fate. I was suddenly attune to the grumblings of the masses, a constant refrain, "I've been traveling all day," percolating across the terminal.

As I was finally boarding my plane at 1, I did so behind a couple, who had only managed separate middle seats. I asked where they were sitting and one had the seat next to mine, so I offered a trade. I was hoping that karma would reward me with a seat on an empty row, or at least next to someone engaging enough to pass the mind-numblingly earliness of the now-morning's flight. Nope, landed myself between two heavyset women—one of whom, I think, was wrapping up a phone-sex conversation as I took my seat. Both fell asleep as soon as we began taxiing and I soon realized that my little TV screen required me to pay for everything, including the headphones.

To cap off the night, when we landed in New York, the plane pulled up just short of the gate. "We're going to sit here for a little while," the pilot chimed in overhead. "We have to wait for a grounds crew team." After an excruciating 20 minutes, we finally pulled into our gate at 3:45am. "Welcome to New York," the flight attendant said, adding with a stinging tone, "Have a nice morning."

I eventually made it back to the apartment at about 5, after a painfully slow baggage claim process (I contemplated leaving it behind) and passed out. I'm hoping next time I travel, they can just beam me up.