** Once again, I had hoped that July would be relatively calm so I could back track to June, but alas, nothing but chaos reigns in my life and June will have to wait until the eye of the storm is overhead, instead of the hurricane force winds that continually surround me. Read on – enjoy! **
The Travel Curse
I’m not sure when exactly my curse started and why the travel gods decided that I would be their travel virgin that they would sacrifice and bestow all sorts of travel calamity on. I believe I am the first Bermingham with the true curse, which likely coincided with my dad’s retirement as a United pilot. The curse is known far and wide, among family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers. I have been told, likely true, that there is the curse by association – merely being in the air at the same time that I am raises the probability of flight delays, cancellations, emergency landings, mechanical failures, etc. In fact, I’m fairly certain that the passengers on Lost’s Oceanic Flight 815 went down simply because I was somewhere in the air, or on the plane on that fateful, television day.
The curse generally, but not always, leaves me alone when traveling on pleasure. It rears its ugly head on business trips to the point where co-workers literally will not fly with me on the same plane. Seriously, you think I’m joking – I’m not. It also typically only strikes on one leg of a round trip – if I have a pleasant trip outbound, my inbound flight will be equivalent to travel hell and vice versa.
And such is the back story on my curse du jour. I am actually typing this while I am 35,000 feet in the air returning from Portland, OR. In other words, by simply typing about my curse, I doing the equivalent of thumbing my nose at the travel gods and saying, “Ha, Ha, I win!”
Yesterday, after work, I put packed away my business attire, threw on my “Sherpa Su” attire and headed to the airport to pick up Jack and Delaney from a short visit with my parents. Like any good Sherpa, I loaded my back with their “bag o fun”, schlepped backpacks, water bottles, Nintendo DS, iPods and assorted other necessary items to drag them up the 35,000 mountain of “You may now remove your seatbelts and pound your head against the seat in front of you” and dropped them off with Grandpa John and Grandma Lee – and promptly turned around and went back home so I would not miss one exciting moment in the office. And after yesterday’s travel curse, I’m fortunate to know that today I can travel in peace and make it back to Chicago in one piece.
Let’s get back to yesterday, back-to-the-future style. United has adopted the “We want to keep you informed – we’ll pound you with information so you can stop asking all of your whiny questions” mantra. In my opinion, sometimes less is more. There are many things in life I would prefer to be utterly naïve on – like how I was conceived, finding out someone in my office completely drops his pants to his ankles to take a leak, learning that Delaney likely has worms, etc. United should go back to the creeping delay, pissy gate agents, and leave all of us in the dark.
After boarding our flight on-time (after all, this was technically a pleasure flight, the gods generally leave me alone), and scooting back from the gate, we go and sit in the penalty box, also known as plane purgatory – you’re not sure how you got there, and you’re not sure if you are ever going to get out.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking – we have a small mechanical problem that we are addressing and we should get back to you in the next 20-30 minutes with our new departure time.” So, the obligatory 20-30 minutes goes by, and then the messages become increasing more detailed. I’m fairly certain the captain was playing a practical joke on the co-pilot and injected him with a high dose of truth serum just to freak all of us passengers out. “Hi folks, this is your first officer speaking. Well, it does look like we have a problem. You see, a rock hit the nose gear of the plane. And not just a small rock, a BIG rock, and now we’ve got fiberglass cracking all over the place and you don’t want to be in the air at 35,000 feet going 500 miles an hour with fiberglass falling off the airplane. That could be VERY dangerous. So, we’re going to move ourselves to a gate so we can have some more mechanics look at the problem and I’ll get back with y’all in the next 45-50 minutes.” I know, you think I’m joking, you thinking I’m making this stuff up for comedic value – umm…no. Seriously, that’s what he said. Read on.
“Hi everyone, this is your first officer again. Well, we got out the digital camera and took a picture of the nose gear and we’re sending that photo to San Francisco so the FAA can evaluate the condition of the plane. Then we’ll find out if we can slap on some duct tape and roll out of here or have to replace the nose gear. I’ll get back to you in another 45-50 minutes.” Did he really just say duct tape? Come on – I know duct tape has a million uses. Like hemming your pants when you’re too lazy to go to the cleaners, rolling it up into balls to hit each other with, taping your kids mouth shut when they’re a little too loud, (Noelle – I know you work for the DCFS, I was JOKING!)…you get the picture. But where on the packaging does the duct tape say, “And when in crisis, will fix commercial airplanes.” I sincerely hope the duct tape in question is not the same variety I buy at Home Depot – although if it is, I’m shocked we don’t have a line item on our airline tickets noting, “Duct Tape premium”, right next to “You’re traveling with luggage? That’ll be $100”.
“Hi y’all – this is your first officer again. Well, the FAA looked at the pictures and remember when I mentioned that fancy tape, well, we’re just going to patch this plane right up and get us out of here. Sorry for the 3-hour delay.” Fancy tape? Fancy tape in my world is double-sided tape, or white-out tape, not tape that can band-aid the front of an airplane traveling 4 hours to Portland. And oh yeah, you didn’t mention fancy tape, you mentioned household strength, gray duct tape. Yeah, duct tape that is going to hold this tin can together. By the way, that 3-hour delay now qualifies me as a cast member of Gilligan’s Island.
And just to make my 3-hour delay in my window seat (not ideal for a girl with a small bladder) plus my 4-hour plane ride that much more enjoyable – I get the joy of sitting next to the hippie couple. They look kinda like the crunchy Oregon tree-hugger hippies that crossed paths one too many times with the Unibomber. And Mr. Hippie, my middle-seat companion, is wearing a freaking skirt. A skirt! Geez, I hope he’s wearing underwear under there. And of course, they have managed to sleep through the 3-hour delay, the 4-hour flight to make me want to burst like a kid learning how to potty train.
And that my friends, is a typical story of one of many travel curses. I am looking for a remedy to the curse, I believe it involves finding a new travel virgin to sacrifice to the travel gods, while mixing used ticket stubs with small bottles of vodka in an airplane toilet while chanting, “Curse Be Gone!” 100 times while seated, with my seatbelt on.
For those of you that have experienced, or can confirm my curse first hand, feel free to post a message on this blog.Next up – “The Windy City” from mid-June, unless of course my current life is more exciting than my past tense version of events.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
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