My fun adventures in Atlanta airport...

By PJ Caroon

**ok ok... so i'm not the best writer. Its Ok to publish this*

They say getting there is half the fun. I don’t know who “they” are, but they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about. One of my worst travelling experiences happened this Christmas break on the way to Wisconsin. We had a wonderful two-week stay with friends and family for a white Christmas in the dairy state which was much more fun than the trip there.

We left on a Friday right after exams. Not surprisingly, I began my packing on Thursday night. The exam went uneventfully, except for my mom having to bring my backpack which held vital papers I needed to turn in or suffer a penalty. We returned home to load the bags in the car, which took longer than expected when my mom knocked over one of her Dicken,s Village houses with her purse. T. Puddlewick’s Spectacles would have to lie in a million pieces on the floor for two weeks, as we were running late. I got to sit in the back, crushed between my mom’s oversized floral suitcase and the door.

We arrived at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport/ construction zone early that afternoon. Luckily, the flight had been delayed an hour. An hour gave us time to relax. Looking back, I believe that hour delay was an omen of things to come.

We boarded, took our seats and just settled in when a large German man tried to sit in the seat between us, and discovered that the fit was less that perfect. “Ze planes, zey are getting smaller.” He said. “Uh huh. That’s right..” I thought. There went my armrest for the flight. The flight to Atlanta had relatively little turbulence, but any that existed was not detectable over the ear splitting squealing of the baby next to us. Why they allow those things to fly without sedatives or something I will never understand.

We landed in Atlanta at about 3:00pm Eastern time. The flight took off at around 4:30, so I figured I had plenty of time to go to Charlie’s Steakery, my favorite eatery on the B concourse of that airport. I guess I happened to walk across the concourse at about the same time as several major flights arrived, because my journey was not unlike that of a salmon trying to swim up a raging river. After I got there, the line was about two gates long (airport distance measure), and at the rate it was moving I wouldn’t get the food before boarding time. So I walked back to our gate, feeling defeated, hungry, and with a huge headache.

When I arrived at the gate, Mom informed me that the flight had been delayed twenty minutes, as the previous flight was delayed coming out of Boston or something. It was as if the airport was mocking me. So, I settled in my seat and munched on some yummy cookies I had the foresight to purchase at Baton Rouge Metro. As I ate them, I came to realization that they weren’t all that yummy.

I sat and waited. Boarding time came and went. Then the announcement came that the flight had been moved back an hour. At least I could go get myself a cheese steak. I strolled back to the gate, sandwich and fries in hand, when I noticed there was something different. The flight. Instead of my flight, it was some flight to Chicago, and the people at the gate definitely were not the same ones as when I had left. I checked the gate number. It was the same. Was I hallucinating? No, as I found out they had changed the gates while I was gone, and apparently they only bother to announce at the gate itself and not the entire concourse. So I went to our new gate, which was closer to the main commercial section of the concourse. And with a new gate came a new, and later, departure time.

After I finished my sandwich, I sat and waited some more at the new gate. I grew bored easily and soon was in search of something to occupy myself. I headed over to the large newsstand in search of a crossword book. One would think that in an airport newsstand of that size, there would be a crossword book. However, not with my luck. There was one word search and about fifty fill-ins. I opted for the word search and went back to the gate. The airport decided to do another funny “lets switch the gates while he is gone” joke on PJ. I wasn’t amused. I procured the location of the new gate and walked over there. Sure enough the flight had been delayed all the way until 9:00pm that night.

After several hours of waiting and a couple trips to the nearby Starbucks, An announcement finally came from the ticket clerk, who seemed less than happy with his job. “Attention all passengers of flight (I forget, so lets call it X) to Milwaukee, We apologize for the delays but are pleased to report that the plane is at the gate, cleaned and ready to go and we are waiting on the arrival of the pilots. They should be here in about 30 minutes, boarding will begin in 40.” A cheer went up from the crowd. Well not a cheer really, but a feeling of relief. It was late at night and we were tired, and we all wanted to get to Milwaukee. About 35 minutes later we got another announcement from the ticket clerk. “Attention all passengers of flight X to Milwaukee, the flight has been canceled do to mechanical problems. Please pick up your hotel and food vouchers at the customer assistance counter.” Now, I don’t claim to be an airplane mechanic, but when a plane is ready to take off one minute and is unable to the next, something is fishy. My theory is the pilots were too lazy to do extra time.

So it appeared we had to spend the night in Atlanta. Had my aunt and uncle in Milwaukee had a cell phone, we could have called and told them, but they found out a couple hours later. We went to the Customer Service counter. Without any exaggeration, there must have been about 500 people in line to only three inept people working behind the counter. It reminded me of those old movies of people waiting in line for bread during the depression. After an hour’s wait, we got up to the counter and got our vouchers and a nice little toiletries bag. As I took the bag, I thought I was safe knowing that the nice people at Delta Airlines really care about their customers. There was a somewhat amusing scene where a supervisor was yelling at some guy up in the control center about the 100:1 ratio of customers to clerks.

Unfortunately, our previous visits to Atlanta have been confined to the airport, so getting to the hotel would be difficult. Luckily, there was a shuttle service. We packed in the minibus driven my some cranky Russian guy for the 10-minute trek to the Sheraton Gateway Hotel. It turned out to be a nice place. I looked on the back of the door, and for two people it was $400 a night. Maybe the people at Delta really did care after all. I gleefully used my food vouchers for an all expenses paid breakfast the next morning. When I woke up, breakfast had come. I’m not sure exactly how they cooked it, but it was the single greasiest meal I had ever choked down, and this is coming from a person who has lived in both England AND Louisiana.

We took the shuttle back to the airport. The Russian guy had swapped placed with a crabby Korean guy this time. We got to take the airport’s underground rail system to get to our concourse. Any lesser man would have fallen over countless times with all the sudden stopping and turning. But with my experience on the rollercoaster-like Japanese rail system, I knew how to spread my weight out just right and didn’t move an inch. That time, the airport didn’t defeat me.

Our plane was still at the gate and ready to go. The mechanical problems had mysteriously vanished overnight. We boarded and as always the flight came complete with the noisy kid accompanied by an underqualifyed parent who thinks if she ignores the problem, it goes away. I had a traveling companion in the seat next to me. He complained about the 777’s poor air conditioning system. Then he claimed that the whole flight cancellation thing wasn’t so bad, “at least they don’t point guns at you,” he said.

Apparently he was some frequent world traveler, and goes to some places that don’t like Americans much. He then pulled out his passport and said, in a very serious voice, “No matter what you do, never, EVER loose track of your passport.”

He then made me take note that his was issued in the American embassy in Algeria, and made some negative remarks about Algerians. Then he showed me his long list of vaccinations. He went on about how the yellow fever vaccination made him quite ill for several days, to put it mildly. In actuality the flight lasted about 2 hours, but it seemed much longer.

We arrived in Milwaukee where my bag was chosen to be the subject of a random explosives test. Lucky me. After it was established that I posed no serious threat to the airport or its customers I was free to go about my business. We waited for my aunt and uncle to arrive for three hours. Then we took the long drive up to Waupaca. It was very relieving to have the whole ordeal done with.

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