Some things about air travel can be rather wonderful, although when,
as I financially have to do, you are travelling Economy, those things can seem
few and far between.
That said, Delta Airlines, the carrier that took us on the outward
leg of our awfully small adventure, were actually one of the better ones that
we have endured over the years.
At least for the “International” part.
The entertainment selection was comprehensive enough for even an old
fussbudget like me to find something vaguely “watchable” – which basically
means that I watched all ten episodes of season three of “Veep” despite never
having seen it before, and then idled away several more hours playing “Bejewelled
2” despite being one of those people who “doesn’t play games…”
Meanwhile, in the interest of health and safety, and a desire not to
have a planeload of fractious, dehydrated passengers, the drinks and the snacks
appeared with surprising regularity and, whilst there was little in the way of
choice in the meals that were provided, the generally “vegetarian-ish” nature
of what we were served up with were pleasant enough.
We were also sitting behind a much-tattooed minor celebrity, in that
he rode mountain bicycles for a living, as he explained loudly, and at length,
to the impressionable young thing sitting beside him. He was going to ride from
Atlanta to Miami before taking part in some sort of bicycle-riding competition
the next weekend.
He attached some kind of camera device to his window (actually, at first, nearly my window as he
misread the seat numbers) so that the entire flight could be time-lapse
photographed for a thirty-second “bit” for his TV show about Mountain
Bicycling, which wasn’t annoying AT ALL…
Naturally, this all impressed me not at all…
Still, on the plus side, there’s always the rather fabulous views of
the clouds that you get up there, too, as well as the staggering landscapes
that you can see far, far below you.
I’m pretty sure that’s Greenland in the photo we took out of the
window.
Of course, there’s always the slight anxiety of having to make that
allegedly “viable” connection at your hub of choice, and, unfortunately, this
time the hub that the fates decreed for us was Atlanta, which was not the
happiest of connections.
Luckily, by getting a bit of a wriggle on, and avoiding a
much-needed “comfort break”, we managed to get in the front ten percent of the
queue at Immigration when guided there by the helpful Guidance Wizards, who
then all vanished, sadly not in clouds of Pixie Dust, when the real problems
began.
And I’m not just referring to “Liam”, the “Child From Hell” who was
in the line several places behind us.
One of the problems for us was our shiny new passports, which meant
that, despite the fact that we did have previous ESTA experience, our slates
had been wiped completely clean and we couldn’t be “fast-tracked” to the other
channels.
Instead we were very much “slow-tracked” and by slow, I really do
mean sl-o-o-o-o-w.
As the huge queue of increasingly fractious “Non-Americans”
separated behind the Big Yellow Line (and
yes, it was actually YELLOW after all) to feed the three officers on duty,
the one processing the line I was in appeared to be taking about five minutes
per person to scan all of our digits and take our pictures.
By the time that there were only three people in front of me, and I
was mentally counting upon a mere twenty minutes for us both to be through the
gate, he promptly stood up without explanation, and went off for a comfort
and/or coffee break, leaving his queue rather open-mouthed in barely-suppressed
rage and astonishment, especially as nobody appeared to relieve him, and nobody
seemed to be looking at the bigger picture and throwing more bodies at the
problem.
When he did eventually return, we were still there, because the
other two queues had grown proportionally in his absence. Luckily, within a
mere quarter of an hour, and with minimal questioning, I was deemed a suitable
candidate to set foot upon the hallowed American turf and then went off in
search of our Transfer Baggage whilst my Beloved was processed behind me, for I
was not allowed to lurk in the Immigration Hall to wait for her.
Having retrieved the bags, I then had to wait several minutes for
her to appear, telling me that this same officer had actually nodded off whilst he was processing her,
and she was moments away from (probably
illegally) prodding him back to consciousness when he suddenly jerked awake
and stamped her through almost out of embarrassment.
So we followed the arrows, almost flung our bags at the Transfer
Conveyor and tore off in search of the train to take us to the Domestic
Terminals, arriving with minutes to spare and without our tickets to a pretty
packed Domestic flight having been sold on to some hopeful punter.
Ah… Domestic Air Travel…
Those buses of the sky where anything you might have heard about
luggage limits seem no longer to apply.
Packed in like animals amongst the hundreds of bags of “stuff” that
the average American simply cannot
travel without, I spotted a rather excessively heavyset woman (“I always ask for the seatbelt extension…”)
walking along the entrance tunnel, carrying some food, and thought “well, I
hope that we don’t have to share our three seats with her.
Which, of course, the fates inevitably decreed that we did.
This brings back such horrible memories of rushing miles to catch internal connection flights in Chicago, something I did regularly for a while. I got the fat person (fat, even by my standards) on every flight and the landings were always bumpy.
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