I got them old airport blues


It's futile and tiresome to complain about the wretched state of air travel in America. You might as well complain about the law of gravity. But since our flight out of Philadelphia appears to be canceled, and wireless Internet access is free here on the weekends, allow me to hold forth for a few paragraphs.

When you drive around a big city, nothing inspires sorrow and rage quite so much as the sight of all the taillights in front of you suddenly lighting up. It means that traffic will soon slow to a full stop, and that whatever plans you had at the moment must now be reconsidered. You get a similar feeling in an airport, when you arrive three hours early for your flight, and clear security without difficulty, and enjoy a nice lunch in a far concourse, and at last wander down to your departure gate to find a long line has formed. The line keeps getting longer because it's not moving. It's not moving because the two women at the gate are powerless to do anything but tap at their terminals as though at work on the middle chapters of a Norman Mailer novel. So the line stretches away past Yummy Pretzels and Chickie & Pete's and everyone waiting tries to simulate forward motion by shifting their weight from one leg to the other. Occasionally they will think of someone else to notify by cell phone that their plans have inevitably come undone.

The good news is that we had a nice time in Philadelphia. The bad news is that our stay here will extend beyond the time frame we considered optimal. We can blame thunderstorms in Atlanta, the PA informs us, which means that we can't blame Delta. Which means that, should I be forced to bide overnight in Atlanta, it will be on my own dime.

Ah well. They say Atlanta is not so lovely this time of year. I'm inclined to believe them. But at least the temporarily free Internet access here at PHL lets me vent to the ether, as opposed to the harried women at the Delta counter. All part of life's rich tapestry. And more evidence for my evolving theory that air travel in 2008 is more trouble than it's worth.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

That ship has sunk

Image
After a long career in journalism, I'm back in the job market. For a limited time only. All I require are a company car, a five-figure signing bonus and a six-figure salary. If somebody could swing by and clean the house once a week, that would be great too. Until then, guess who's going to be blogging like there's no tomorrow. I've worked at various newspapers for the better part of three decades. I've been a reporter and an editor and there was a time in the mid '90s when I thought I was being very clever by learning HTML. I was thinking: Job security, baby; every newspaper will be on the Internet in a few years. I was right about the last part. But it turns out most people eventually questioned the wisdom of paying for what they could get free. Who knew? Then circulation and ad revenue headed south, and corporate boards figured they could maintain profits by shrinking the product and letting people go. Now circulation and ad revenue are Thelma and Louise: st
Read more

Back to the keyboard -- but it's a new one

Image
After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I'm back to work on what I will refer to as "the book." I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day's output. But since I've had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I'm employing a few other strategies. First: A new computer! Yep, I have decided that there are too many games on my desktop machine, it's too noisy, and it confines me to one room of the house. So I ordered a new notebook computer from Dell. It's their new 1420 model. Should be here in a couple more weeks -- although you never know with Dell -- and then the only files I'll transfer from my old computer to the new one are my in-progress writing projects. I know what you're thinking: Basically, I'm offering myself a cheap bribe to a commit to a project that will probably take a year -- long after the shiny new computer cease
Read more