for want of wine the flight was lost

Soen with anole--nothing to do with my story.

(This is a long story but I feel like I need to get it off my chest while it's fresh.) This week I went back to the office in Jersey for a day and a half of meetings. On my way out the door to get my return flight, I bumped into Morris (Chairman of the company) and thanked him for some delicious wine he gave us when I first moved down to NC, which I said (without exaggeration) was the best wine I'd ever had. Being Morris, he said, "let me give you another one." How could I resist? After all, this wine costs $140 and was my all-time favorite. In fact he gave me two bottles--that one and another type he wanted me to try. I thanked him profusely and ran out to the car so I wouldn't be more late for my flight.

I arrived at Terminal F, which is usually deserted, and saw a packed house. No problem, I had forty minutes before my flight and I didn't have to check my bag, so I got my boarding pass and dashed off to security. One of the TSA dudes said, "Oh no. Whose bag is this?" And he proceded to explain that I couldn't take these two bottles of wine on the plane--after all I might use them as a weapon. I said, "If you had any idea how expensive these bottles of wine were, you'd know there was no way I was going to do that." At least he laughed. I glanced at the clock and knew I could never wait in that line and make my flight, so I was just about to make this guy's day and give him my favorite wine of all-time, when he said, "Look, just go over there, cut right to the front of the line, get a baggage ticket and come right back here and you'll be fine." (Foreshadowing alert.)

After 10 minutes, I got my ticket and handed the bag to a security guy. Being in a rush, I didn't think to take my computer out of the bag with the two loose bottles of very expensive wine. I dashed back to security, and went to my gate, which was (of course) F36. Meanwhile, I heard no announcements, and the big board just said my flight was "on time" and not "boarding." I get to ny gate and the door is closed and no USAir attendants are anywhere to be seen, so I figure all is good. I still have eight minutes before departure. I sit down for a breather when I see them open the door and call out someone's name. They let out a "yes!" and head for the jetway. Uh-oh. I go over to talk to someone, although there's no one there, and a fellow passenger informs me that they stopped taking passengers with boarding passes for this flight ten minutes ago and now they're just letting stand-bys on. Then I see the plane pull away. Thyere are five of us--with boarding passes--who need to find another flight. I turn around at the "special services" line and see there are thirty angry people in front of me, all of whom seem to be chanting, "...and I'm never flying USAir again!" There are two people working a counter that normally seats eight.

Due to the storms the day before, dozens and dozens of flights had been cancelled, and so USAir was placing as many stand-bys on flights as possible. But one passenger told me three crew members wound up taking our spots. Nice, huh? One woman told me she spent the night in the airport. "Sucks to be her," I thought not realizing it would soon be me, too. After two hours of standing on this line (literally), and after the USAir rep says, "You had a boarding pass--I don't undertstand why they didn't put you on this flight," I get put on standby to Charlotte at 5:55 with a standby connection to home at 9:40. I just had to go to A24 (of course).

Travelling tip #1: If you're going to be stuck in PHL for a long time, proceed immediately to Terminal A--the International terminal, where all the great restaurants and bars are--and where the staff is much more friendly. There I watched them hold a flight to Zurich ten minutes past its departure time so that all the passengers with boarding passes could be taken care of before taking stand-bys. That's when I decided to go for a drink.

My flight not only didn't leave at 5:55, but it didn't leave at 7, 7:40, or even 8. Meanwhile, I had a nice dinner, met a Sweedish dude who told me he travels 200 times a year (ouch), and bought a copy of The Tipping Point, which I would almost finish before I finally got home. I also met a guy from my neck of the woods, Johnny, who also had a boarding pass for the flight we were displaced from, so we commiserated over a couple of beers.

Finally the plane left the gate a little after 8 and we taxied for what seemed like forever. Then the announcement came: All traffic has stopped and we're shutting down the engines. The stewardesses started handing out water. So much for making my 9:40 connection. An hour later we took off and an hour and nine minutes after that we arrived at Charlotte, where I would wait in yet another line, during which the woman behind me said, "excuse me sir, but you have a cockroach on your back." I got a ticket for a 7:45am flight. Well, not a ticket exactly. When the woman printed it out, her colleague said, "You did it wrong" and she said, "oh, well that's all right" and handed me this piece of paper that looked almost, but not quite like a ticket. I said, "No, that's not all right. I want a ticket." She said it was fine, but took it, crossed out something and wrote "e-ticket" on there, which now REALLY didn't seem right to me. "You sure this is right?" They both assured me several times that it was. I walked away unconvinced. Just then all the bars and restaurants closed. Suddenly I was starving.

Johnny and I walked around to find food and/or a place to sleep for the night. We met a Marine who was late getting back to basic training and he said, "I just hope they beat me for my punishment, rather than a lengthy court-martial." I asked him how he could get introuble for something that was not his fault andhe said that basically, everything is your fault if your not where you're supposed to be. He saw Johnny and I look at each other and said, "At least I love my profession."

Johnny finally decided to go to the other side of security to get some food from an all-night Starbucks and I decided to bed down in the business center, where I scored a nice comfy chair. It was cold but I felt like I could at least get a few hours of sleep here. Then came the announcement: Everyone out. You'll have to spend the night in the ticketing and baggage claim area. Why? No one was very forthcoming in their answers, but I was told to hop to, mister.

I emerged from security and the ticketing and baggage area looked like something out of the Stand. There were bodies strewn over every square inch of the place. I found a coner right near another security entrance and settled in. A guy who turned out to be a minister handed me a blanket, which was nice of him.

Traveling tip #2: The Tipping Point is an excellent read, but at a mere 320 pages, it makes for a lousy pillow. At around 3am I wished I had taken my copy of the 564-page Satanic Verses from my bag.

At 4:30 security started opening up again. At this point the minister wanted to know all of our thoughts on the afterlife. Luckily some kid behind me got into a lenghty conversation with the guy so I wouldn't have to. I went back to my comfy chair in the business center and fell asleep for half an hour. The next few hours were uneventful, I mostly wandered around as a zombie. I made my way to the gate and showed a very grumpy USAir attendant my "ticket" and asked her directly if this was going to be OK to get me on the flight. She said yes, but I was still skeptical. Sure enough, when it came time to board, another USAir rep looked at my "ticket" and said, "this isn't right." I was about ready to explode. There was no way they were going to keep me off this damned flight. Luckily, this woman didn't have enough energy to put up a stink, she just said, "Oh heck with it. Go ahead." But even as I was sitting on the (very small) plane and watching more and more people straggle their way towards us, I kept thinking they were going to tell me to get off. That USAir rep even came out and with every step I was preparing my speech about all the travails I'd been through and if she thought she was going to... turns out I was fine.

I finally arrived at my home airport, went over to baggage, and was entirely unsurprised to learn that my bag wasn't there yet. As I was filling out a claim--and meanwhile all I'm thinking is that the wine bottles broke, spilling wine over my computer and ruining my bag and everyone else's (not to mention destroying a bottle of my all-time favorite wine )--when it occurs to me that my car keys are in my bag.

Never fear, Johnny offers to drive me home. So we get out to his truck and... his battery is dead. I'm not making this up. So, I run around the parking lot and flag someone down to jump his car, and he drives me home. Several hours later, my wife drops me off at the airport to check on my bags and retrieve my car. Much to my surprise, not only was my bag there, but the wine was... intact! I get home and showed the wife my wine and she says, "That's not the same wine we had before." It had better be good, damnit.