Cin City

[fbhjr]

Wednesday morning I said goodbye to my wife and new cactus and headed to the airport.

(This is not truly true. As I had to be at the airport at 5, I did not stop to see the cactus in my office first. But, the principal is the same.)

As my great grand uncle was the first manager of Logan airport, I’ve always felt like it was a bit of a family place. So, it is sad to see the ceilings dripping and falling in.


The flight was very crowded to Philadelphia.


And, it was cloudy the whole way.


I was somewhat worried when we were getting close to Philadelphia and I saw what looked like a mushroom cloud coming up from it.

(Maybe I should not read Stephen King stories when flying...)

The other clouds also looked strange. I’m not sure if it came out, but there seemed to be rivers of one kind of cloud flowing through channels of another kind.


I guess the pilot was also worried about the growing number of mushroom clouds as he started circling them.


Eventually he took the risk of going under the clouds and the airport was still there.


Because of Philadelphia being nuked, a lot of flights were late and the crowds were large.

(I know they’re saying it was intense rain. But, while we were on the ground the sun came out and the clouds parted. So, I’m going with nukes.)

We took off 90 minutes late, so pushed our return trip back 2 hours so we’d have enough time at the factory.


And, we got to Dayton without problem.


It was funny to me that were we started seems to be a far off exotic place for them.


We drove the hour south, did two hours of inspection, gave half an hour of results and required changes and then drove back to Dayton. The guy traveling with me is new to the division and we don’t know each other well. So, we spent the time talking about politics and religion as you should with people you don’t know well.

There our flight was more than 3 hours late.
I find the entrance display there ironic.

Taught the world to fly. Should have included a watch.

As we had time, we ate dinner there. Small bugs were included in my salad at no extra cost.

That said, the salad dressing was extremely good. Don’t know if it is because of the bugs or not.

This is Mike.

He is the most helpful gate agent I have ever encountered in the hundreds of flights I have taken.
He did everything he could to get us back to Boston. He tried connections in 5 other airports. He tried other airlines for us, even though that isn’t covered by his employers.
When he found the connection time was going to be tight, he put us in the front row of the plane so we could be the first off and run for the other gate.
I like him. I’m going to send a thank you note for him to USAir.

Of course, one of the reasons he had so much time to spend with us is most of the other planes flew away and left us there.
Mike would track the flights for us.
“This one has left and is on its way. Maybe that will work for you. Wait, it had to go back to the gate again.”
At one point the guy from my office and I were the only guys there in a waiting room of women.

“I’m not sure if we’re in some sort of reality show or a comedy movie,” I said to him. “But, two engineers abandoned in a waiting room of women sounds like a different kind of movie.
They all got on a flight to North Carolina that we turned down, so we’ll never know.

Our plane did pull in 3 hours after it should have left.


Mike had told us that if we left by 9:15, we could probably get to our flight to Boston.
“There are three other late planes with people for that flight,” he said. “It’s more than 30 people total. They might hold the plane longer for that many people. I wouldn’t, but they might.”
Just as they were about to let us on the plane, a mechanic came out of the jetway and said “a bird might have hit the plane. We need to go examine it for damage.”
We took off at 9:45.


Just for reference, the plane was so small, I could put the flat of my nose on the ceiling.


We got to Phili and parked at Terminal F. We ran for the busses to terminal C.
They had stopped running for the night.


The woman ahead of us started yelling at the bus driver that he had to take her over to get to the flight to Boston. He called in on his radio and was told it was already gone.
“Take me over there anyhow!” she demanded.
“I’m done for the day! Your plane is gone! I’m not taking anyone anywhere! You want to go to terminal C, you walk!”
“I demand you take me over there!”
“If we’re going to terminal C, we’d better walk,” I said to the guy with me.
The woman gave us a dirty look as I guess she thought we were going to join in berating this guy who wanted to home as much as we did.

Sadly, it turned out that to get to terminal C, you had to leave security.

And, security closes for the night at 11, so we couldn’t get back in.
I find that very strange as they had flights taking off until 1AM, so what do those people do to get to the gates?

We split up as he wanted to get a hotel room even though we had been told the only place with open rooms was $300 and we were only going to be there 4 hours. I went to look for a place to sleep in the outer terminal while he continued to call hotels.
That airport is very straightforward, so I had no problem finding a place to rest.


There is a strangeness to such a large space built for lots of people with no one in it.


I found a little corner with a power outlet next to a chair and settled in.

I even slept a little.

The ad across from me about the sleeper seats on airplanes mocked me.


Eventually a man came along with a floor scrubbing Segway.

We rode up and down making a “wub, wub, wub” noise.
In the middle of the floor it made a loud noise and bad smell. He eventually got it going again, but without the brushes down, so no wub noise. I was just as glad.

The floors there peel back as part of a sculpture. I wonder if the floor polish Segway goes up those...


I was not really surprised to find a nutter ran the whole place.


The moving luggage entry across from me had a moving reflection that to me looked like a white car driving past some trees.


I’m not sure how that reflection came from this.


At 3:15, this man came out and began setting up all of the people herding lines for the ticket booths.

I had never thought about them taking them down and putting them up every day. It was like finding magic elves repairing your shoes.

He did a good job in a short time.


At 4:30 the security station behind the curled up floor opened.


On the other side was a shop selling dinosaur eggs.

I was quite hungry, but the shop wasn’t open so I had some of the food my wife packed me for breakfast instead.

The plane boarded right on time. Thanks to Mike we were again in the front row.

At some point the switched the “no smoking” signs on planes to “turn off your electronics”

It’s the first time I’ve seen that.

It was again cloudy from there to here.


But, soon we had a clear view of Boston harbor as we landed.


After we got off of the plane, we were told the whole terminal was shut down and no one was allowed in or out until “something” was sorted out.
This did not make people happy.


But, they sorted it fairly quickly and I was driving out of the city only a bit later than I normally get to work.


My Prius is faster than a speeding train!

(Yes, I know it should be more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet. But, I’ll take what I can get.)

Anything was faster than the folks going in to the city.


My wife waited to go in to work until I got home, so I got to see her. That was very nice.
Just as I got home, my boss called me to say I could take the morning off. So, I’m writing this then I’ll go in to work for the meetings he pushed back to the afternoon so I won’t miss them.
One of the meetings is for ideas of how to get people to put in more hours.
Hmmm... Maybe not the best time to ask me that.

Comments

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

nice of him to give you a morning off! :) although... Meeting Irony is ironic.

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Man, last time I was at Logan it was full of armed guards...I really do need to get back to Boston soon!

Thanks for the adventure!

[brickhousewench.livejournal.com]

Man, last time I was at Logan it was full of armed guards...

Same here. Of course, it was also three weeks after they re-opened the airports after 9/11....

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

I also remember the soliders and machine gun days.
I also remember when you could get an airport tour where they'd let you walk down to a plane, go in, sit down and see what it was like.

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Mine wasn't that close to 9/11...it was actually just a few years ago (my grampy's funeral I think) and I remember leaving and seeing tons of armed guards with machine guns...it was rather disconcerting (I grew up in Boston and have flown in and out of Logan several times, it was just an odd sight for me)

[uawildcatgrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah...and when you could actually go with people right up to the gangway to say goodbye or to greet incoming flights...those were the days.

[brickhousewench.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the trip from Hell. =(

Glad you're home safe.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I don't want to go anywhere, EVER.

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

You will miss the bad that way. But, you miss the good as well...