Me? Wha?
Our Heroine,
Would-Be Travel Writer, is Not Happy
I am, among other things, the Child of a
Pilot.
This means little to
most folks, apart from, "Hey! Free airfare!" (And yet: not quite - and
certainly not for the last 16 years, so don't get so excited, Sparky). What
it does mean is that I'm almost allergic to checking bags. When you're a
pilot's kid, you fly standby a lot, and standby means that Your Bags, They Do
Not Leave You.
You see,
those folks who book flights, they lie. Or at least, they only know what is in
front of them when they tell you your proposed standby flight is "wide open."
Mr. Murphy (and his law) and Ms. Standby tend to get together and make some
righteously nasty whoopie on your metaphorical when you have the temerity to
believe it when They (yes - that "They" - the one with the capital T) say that
the flight is "wide open." A "wide open" flight means that ten minutes from now
an international rugby tour is going to book an entire team (with support staff)
onto your flight, turning it from "wide open," to "crowded, insane, drunken
cesspit. Standby? Forget it." Your bags, on all such occasions - should you
be so foolish as to check them, somehow end up in Corfu, drunk, singing rugby
songs.
So, I have actually
considered writing a column on traveling lightly, as I believe I am something of
an expert on the subject. Generally speaking, I do not stray far from my bags,
and they do not wander from
me.
However, a week's worth of
business travel, with attendant suitage, does not accommodate our would-be
travel writer. She must go forth and check, or else start to wish she was never
born and her clothes never stitched.
And now we find her, nine
hours from reaching home, eleven hours from the moment when she was assured that
by taking the earlier flight she was doing the right thing because her bags were
"already being loaded" on the earlier flight due to weather that seems to not
exist.
Oh, no. We are Not
Happy.
Posted: Friday - March 10, 2006 at 08:37 PM
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