Travel tales with Mandy

I do not advise flying to a locale two time zones away and flying back home the next day. Just . . . don’t. You’ll thank me later.

Because I just did that, and really, guys, I should be taking a nap. But I can’t sleep and maybe it’ll be better to just see how long I can go before I drop and get a good, deep sleep tonight. All that said, I think you all deserve a little run down of the last two days.

Monday, September 28, 2009: I leave my house a little after 6 a.m. for the airport. It’s not far and my flight isn’t until 7:40 a.m., but I’ve left on a Monday morning before and the Nashville airport can be kind of crazy when all the commuter/businessmen are flying to meetings. I wanted to get through security and get to my flight with as little stress as possible. I manage to get to the airport, find a relatively close parking spot, get my boarding passes, and make it through security with a bit of time to spare. Then, they board the plane and announce a FAIL message on some sensor or battery or something. Obviously, I wasn’t really paying attention. They called a maintenance guy who might be able to fix the problem and informed us if not, then they’d have to get the part from “another station” (whatever that means!) and strongly hinted we’d have to deplane and reboard another plane. We left about 30 minutes late, which was worrisome, since I had a really short layover in Salt Lake City and really couldn’t take the next flight out b/c of the time frame in which I HAD to get to Portland, Oregon, for the focus group. The flight attendant announced we’d all be rebooked to later flights in the event we did arrive too late to make our connections.

That said, we arrived around 10:50 a.m. and I had 20 minutes to get to my gate. We had landed in gate C12 and my boarding pass said I was leaving from D12. Another concourse! The gate agent was still telling people in front of me the flight was leaving from D12, so I took off. My mistake was NOT looking at the departures screen before hurrying to my gate. I know gate changes. I know to always check the screen, yet I ignored my inner voice and sped past the screens in my hurry to get to D12 and not miss my connection. I can walk FAST. I got to D12 with time to spare and saw a long line. But the board info didn’t line up with my flight. This flight was going to Honolulu, which while being a locale I’d love to visit someday was not my destination yesterday. I hurry back to the departure screens on the D concourse, see that my flight is leaving from C12 (yes, the very gate I arrived at minutes earlier) and start hurrying back. I was on the people mover between concourses when they announced last call for my flight. I took off at a sprint. There may have also been a few moments of saying “crap, crap, crap” aloud while running, too. I reached my gate, finally, out of breath, with a bruised area where my carry-on had banged against my thigh, and I was a bit hot and out of sorts. But they hadn’t closed the doors! I was boarding! The guy in front of me gave me a dirty look for my breathlessness, but I didn’t care. I was on the flight!

My seat, per usual, was at the back of the plane. Next to a rather stoic couple who did not look pleased to see me. I decided to be as polite and nice as possible to them. They let me in to my seat, I stuffed my bag under the seat in front of me, and the plane took off. It was much later that I noticed the stoic man’s hat. It was a brightly colored baseball cap (primary colors) with a propeller on top. It also said “Piccolo” on the side. I was unsure of what to do with any of this info and simply pondered it in my heart.

The big plus of this flight was the TVs in the back of the seat in front of you. I got to watch Food Network while in flight (and a little Sports Center, if you really want to know). You could also follow the flight route on said screen and learn the landmarks and towns you were flying over. And I got to see Mt. Hood. AMAZING! I looked out my window and there it was, high above the clouds, the top only visible to those enough lucky enough to be flying past that day. It was beautiful, in a craggy, rugged, timeless sort of way. The way most natural wonders are.

I arrived, got some food with Mike, took a nap, and went to the focus group. The meeting went well and we got back to the hotel around 9:30 p.m. Pacific. I took a shower and dried my hair, knowing I was going to have to leave for the airport at 4:30 a.m. and didn’t want to get up and fix my hair!

I left Portland on a 6:25 a.m. flight, just as the city was waking up. Lights from below winked at me; commuters and early risers were just taking to the streets. As my plane rose above the city, the lights twinkled, saying their good-byes. It was a city I never really got the chance to explore or enjoy. I watched out the window as the plane continued to rise and saw the lights cut a swath through the city, following a winding river I can’t name through the heart of the city. It was beautiful. It seemed utterly perfect. It was good-bye. And then, the plane rose above the clouds and Portland was gone.

The teenager in the seat next to me missed it all. He went to sleep upon sitting down. Every once in awhile he’d fall toward me, then jerk wildly, and reposition himself back in the middle of his seat, only to repeat the whole thing a few minutes later. He slept the entire flight.

Our arrival into the Twin Cities was uneventful, except that I could find no gate info for my flight. I had to track down a gate employee and ask where I was supposed to be going. None of the screens even listed my flight! Which is a scary feeling—I’m not going to lie!

The flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul was interesting, though, if only for a idiot on the flight. Before boarding, I had been called to the desk and asked to move seats to allow a blind passenger some space. I didn’t care where I was on the plane as long as I was on it, so I said yes. And I got the aisle right after first class, meaning more leg room. Which is nice, even when you’re only 5 foot 3. I happily took my seat and noticed the empty seat one row back that I’d originally been assigned to. I also noted the empty seat across the aisle from me. Suddenly, a young couple appeared at the front of the plane with the flight attendants. He was mad. She just sat in the seat originally assigned to me. He followed the flight attendants up to the cockpit where they were asking the captain something. Apparently he was demanding to be seated in first class. Eventually, they opened the cabin door back up, let some gate agent/higher up woman on and she talked to the guy, now sitting in the open seat across the aisle from me. He explained he’d taken some medication and was calm now (I think he said he’d had a panic attack). I personally believe none of this and think his worse problem was a temper he refused to control and an oversized sense of entitlement and it’s-all-about-me focus. And as for medication, who knows.

He seemed to calm down. For a bit. He got weirdly paranoid and blamed the head flight attendant for everything. He cursed at her for telling him to sit down. He got up when he wasn’t supposed to and followed a flight attendant around until she gave him something to drink (they had already announced our descent!). He cursed at her and called her inappropriate names when she told him to buckle his seat belt, then raised his voice to her when the plane had just landed and was still taxing to the gate and he stood up and put his back pack on. He tried to stare her down at that point, and I actually was scared he would charge her or something. She had done nothing outside of her duties and everything she had said to him was for his safety. He was just an idiot who didn’t like being told to do anything. When the flight was over, we all sort of let him and his wife get off the plane, because I think we’d had enough of them by then.

I was just happy to be back in Nashville. I never thought seeing the Cumberland carving its way through the Tennessee countryside would thrill my soul. But I’m home. And the next trip is a vacation!