Trip to Nick: Fuck You
You gotta stick to that Vice Presidential language. It seems to have served Dick well so, I feel the more I work his level of language in the better it’ll be.
So, well all in all this has been a great trip so far. It started out last night as I was packing and pre-preparing to go to work. (I went to work then directly to the airport.) In the middle of finishing up my packing, the electric goes out. So in addition to not being able to actually see what I’m packing, I’m also faced with the problem of ensuring that I turned off all the lights, because I’m not going to be at my apartment for a few days and I don’t want to leave a light on.
Okay so we started with the power going out while I was packing. Work went fine. Although on my way out getting a bagel at the local Brugglers, I ran into a coworker on my way in. This is wasn’t any coworker, this was the uberbitch, “this is my Kinko’s so do what I say” coworker. Given that we were both off the clock and she was nicely goading me on, I just ignored her.
So. I did make it to the airport on-time, which I consider a miracle. While I was waiting for my flight to take off there was a woman in tears because she had missed her flight because of TSA-Rape. (Or at least thats what it seemed like from her reaction.) While initially I thought she was grandstanding to get what she wanted given her personal family situation I understand why she was so upset. To be tactful, I’ll leave out what had happened. So after the raving emotional mother, the power outage and running into uberbitch, I figured we had gotten everything that could go wrong out of the system.
How wrong I can be sometimes.
The forty five or so of us got on the plane, one of these wonderful regional-jet-sardine-cans that US Airways is relying on to provide the proper level of service for every city, and keep costs down. No sooner than we had gotten on the plane, the pilot announced there was a ground stop at our destination because of the weather and we’d be delayed, and he thought we’d be more comfortable in the terminal. Most people got off the plane for the fire drill. Then they got all back in. I having just went to the bathroom and well, not wanting to move around just hung around on the plane.. I guess me and my fellow minded passengers failed the fire drill. After battening down the hatches on the plane we taxied to the end of the runway and waited for another forty-five minutes, right next to a snazzy FedEx Express 727. (Note there is no such thing as Federal Express anymore.. Its now known at FedEx Express. Because we’ve got FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, FedEx Custom Solutions, and my employer: FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers (Yeah we got screwed with the long name. Although there is a newer member of the family, FedEx Postal Solutions. Whee! Next thing you know we’ll have FedEx Food after we buy and fix McDonald’s, you’ll get your food by 10:30 am tomorrow, should be fast enough for anyone.)
But back to the point. So we ended up leaving Cincinnati about the time we were supposed to get to Charlotte. When we got there we didn’t have a gate. (Yeah, our flight was batting a 500.)
I ended up missing my connecting flight, which was good because well I got to get lunch at Chili’s and Starbucks. Free Starbucks. One of the wonderful things about most airports now adays is all of the food service is provided by the same company, when the credit card processing goes down, All of the credit card processing goes down. I grabbed some cash for food, and I got a free coffee after they couldn’t use my Starbucks Duetto Card.
We had a short ground stop leaving to Laguardia which didn’t cause us much trouble. And thats where I’m at now, on the A320 EOW waiting for some freaking beverage service, because these airliners are like the desert. (For good reason, they can’t raise the humidity too high because it is corrosive to the shell of the airplane.)
So well yeah its been a great trip besides the fact that I’m exhausted from being awake for twenty hours.
Oh another thing about this bullshit security. While they’ve gone through such pains and forcing people to break off their nail files from their nail clippers, They’ll gladly provide you with glass salt shakers and glass beer bottles which can be very easily broken and made into a weapon. This is of course while sit down restaurants are forced to pay lip service to security by only using plastic silverware.
Logic does not appear to be something that we americans have.