Viewing the country from 35,000 feet, Pink Floyd’s Animals blasting in my headphones, looking out on the vastness that is the American West all I can think about is that there sure are a lot of neat places to kill yourself in this country. Once spot that I happened to really like, and I’m not quite sure where exactly it is, pilots don’t seem as quick to point out the sights on the left and right side of the airplane like they used too, some really picturesque and quite deep canyons with really nice vertical cliffs. Of course looking on them from my vantage point, I’m not sure how you’d even get them, there doesn’t seem to be a road or a building or town anywhere in sight.
The west is still pretty empty all things considered.
So uh, why in such a good mood. Putting aside the obvious, the kids and I are flying to a funeral I for one am expecting to be the saddest day of all of our lives.
So far anyway, which I hope isn’t tempting fate.
No, I’m in a particularly surly mood simply because I am flying. And flying these days… lemmie put it this way, if flying was a pain in the ass 15 years ago, before the TSA and when traveling with kids still required their weight in baggage and accessories, if that was a pain, and I’m pretty sure I thought it was, now-a-days.. it’s the equivalent of a dry prison rape, at least on by the Pain the Ass Scale.
It’s so bad that I’m really thinking twice before I go anywhere via an airlines.
It started with the ticket purchase experience. Granted I’m still living in the grand old days when a flight from Minneapolis to San Francisco was about $250.00. Lets say 2000 or so. And I get it, last minute travel is always expensive. But.. imagine the jaw dropping that happened when my initial pass an itinerary came in at $1200 per person. I don’t think there’s anywhere on planet worth a $1200 ticket. I’m cheap I’ll move on.
Still… Since we were travelling on short notice to a funeral I thought maybe bereavement fares might work for us. To book a bereavement fare you have to call the airlines and talk to an agent. If you can figure out where to find the number to call, and can successfully navigate the intricate code of numbers on symbols that unlocks the secret “human” option, you probably don’t need bereavement fares because you probably know how to find secret $5.00 fares to anywhere in country.
After much trying, lots of pushing buttons and a few false starts I was able to find our local former hometown airlines bereavement policy, which after reading the fine print, we did in fact qualify for. The page was very informative up until the part where it tells you how to actually get the fare, other than “call”. Call who? What number?
My first of many F-words in this process.
Finally after a day and half of looking I got an agent. She was very nice, very sympathetic to our families situation, sorry for our loss and sorry that we had to travel under these circumstances. I had hope again. Unfortunately it is airline policy not to issue bereavement fares until they’ve had every opportunity to sell out every seat on every flight that we might need.
“Well, I don’t show anything available yet.. I would suggest that you call back the day before you need to travel and we’ll see what’s still open at that time”. I’m not that much of a gambler frankly, so back to online booking.
Microsoft has their fare predictor engine, I’ve used it successfully a few times. According to the predictions, fares were going to drop substantially in the next day or two. More than $100.00 according to the little arrow, be patient. Now, I also noticed that the dropping fares were now $50.00 higher than they had been the day before. More insult, in addition to paying that kind of money, my flight to San Francisco would be through Chicago and Denver. Or I could go through Pheonix and LA, or fucking Quebec City, Gatwick, Moscow, Taipei, Honolulu Vancouver and then straight into SFO. That one was $11.00 cheaper.
Want a direct flight? $2000.00 per ticket. F-bomb.
After 5 days the prices had completely skyrocketed off the charts and the arrow was still showing wait. Where’s the usefulness of this site?
Well, some things, like a beloved parents funeral, well, you just can’t mess around too much. If this were a family vacation however plans would be changing, we’d go the damn Dells instead of flying anywhere.
I took a look at Amtrak. Amtrak from MPLS to San Jose was actually $100.00 more than flying and took 56 hours longer than the flight. Each way. Greyhound? Super cheap, 8 hours faster than the train.. but I couldn’t get enough candy and nuts on the bus to sustain life for that long.
After much looking, changing the date to come home a day later than I wanted to, and using a Ho Chi Minh Airlines I found a fare that only made me nauseous as opposed to fully vomiting, and fighting every fiber of my desert heritage that told me not to do I pushed the “buy” button and charged my clean credit card $3200 in airfare for a three day trip.
This for my wife’s Dad, I would go if it was $10,000 he was the most important influence on my adult life, it just hurt a bit, in my sensitive wallet area.
Fine suck it up, buy the ticket.
The day before travel I received an email from Ho Chi Minh Airlines that it was time for “pre-checkin” print the boarding pass at home, one of the very few truly useful advancements in air travel in the last 50 years, I think the last one was making flights non-smoking.
According the email, if I wanted to select my seats now would be the time. Yeah. OK here’s where I want to hire a witch to put a pox on someone’s house. Seat fees. Really. $15.00 if you want to pick a window seat, $25.00 for an aisle seat. Middle seats are free.
F-word flying, I selected the seats. The daughter, who gets nervous about sitting next to strangers asked me if were sitting in next to each other. “yes, but you have to think vertically, not horizontally”. Son looked curious, “what does that mean”. “Well, we’re all in the same row kids, we’re in row ‘B’”. hmm? I’m in 11B, Daughter is next to me in 12B, son #1 is in 13B and the middle kid gets the end 14B. “We’re in a vertical row”.
Now, none of the kids wants to travel. If you wanted to pay an extra $50 for seats just charge me upfront asswipes. Next up my favorite, the bag fee. $20.00 for the first bag online, if you wait until you get to the airport it’s going to be $30.00.
Again, where is that witch when you need her?
Stuffed and loaded we waited anxiously for travel day.
Early morning departure, my brother from another mother pulled into the driveway at 4:45. I love that man. I do the same for him of course, but I’m going to say now, pre-5:00 am rides to the airport are a great litmus test for friendship.
Zombie kids were ready to go; I made a pot of coffee, quaffed some raisin bran and listened to my almost adult children argue about what snacks were purchased for the trip.
Daughter was in charge of the traditional Target run to load up crap to eat on the plane. This is a holdover for when they were like 3 or so. But I indulged, this is going to be a rough trip, a little trial mix and couple bags of M&M’s weren’t going hurt anyone. So, off she went, with brother, to Target to buy some snacks for a 4 hour flight.
4 hours. What they came back with.. $45.00 later.. all I could say “if the Donner party had this much shit when they got snowed in on their trip to California, lets just say we wouldn’t know their name today. They’d have all be diabetic but they would have survived 5 months in the snow with no problem.”
As we loaded up the dog decided to take himself for an early morning walk. He hasn’t been out front in a while thanks to a bully bulldog across the street that attacks him at every opportunity, so he was looking for chance to crap on the neighbors lawn. Chasing a dog down at 5:00 in the morning is no way to start a trip. He came back about the time I said “fuck it, leave him we’ll get a new dog when we get back,” He’s clairvoyant that way.
The one good thing, so I thought, about Ho Chi Minh Airlines, we get to use the smaller and “faster” former Humphery Terminal at the MSP. Now known as Terminal 2. On arrival we checked our bag, prepaid check, and went upstairs to security. We had about 90 minutes to get through security. I wasn’t sure we’d make it.
The line went through the crowd weaver to the back of the parking ramp, and back to the escalator. The only good thing, I was hoping we would see people in line, on the escalator have to treadmill it to stay in line, or a pile up at the top. Heh heh.
Nope, not even a little joy for me this fine morning. In line I was treated to several lectures about travelling with liquids. I was not aware that there were this many people in this country who haven’t traveled with liquids before. This observation based on the fact that literally 3 out 4 listened to the TSA lady, and THEN unpacked their bottles of hairspray, tooth paste, Prep H and lighter fluid and proceeded to put into little bottles and plastic bags.
The only bottles that I will EVER travel with in a bag are the 6 1.5 oz bottles of Jim Beam I’m gonna need to survive the flight back damn it.
50 minutes later we made it to the top of the line where.. we were told to stop and wait. The TSA dude who looks at your license and makes the secret note that says “cavity search” on your boarding pass, the same boarding pass that never gets looked at again, had us stop while he accommodated 6 parties from the First Class line, who had just walked up.
I may have to look into that Occupy Wall Street thing that I’ve been ridiculing up until that moment. “Why are we waiting Dad?” the girl asked. “Because we’re in Steerage dear. When the ship sinks we don’t get a lifeboat.” She was confused.
Then the shoeless dance where we take the laptop out of its case, remove the belt and colostomy bag, watch, hip implant, and push all the stuff through the X-Ray.
For the first time in my life, I set off the alarm. “Please empty your pockets”. I’ve traveled enough, and am so annoyed with the experience BTW that I intentionally go to the airport with nothing in my pockets. Nothing on my person what so ever except; my drivers license, my glasses and my soul. I know better and I can’t stand being stopped.
“I have nothing” I told the guy. “I find myself completely destitute”. He didn’t know what that meant. Took off the glasses, pulled my bowie knife out of my sock and somehow got through. My son.. not so lucky.
His carry on was, for some reason, singled out for further screening. The TSA guy pulled it aside and put it on a table for this purpose. He said something into his walkie that I can only hope was “need help on lane three”, but I have my doubts. For the next, and I kid you not, for the next number longer than 15 minutes, and I know this because I started tracking and got to 15 minutes, which means it was more like 25 because I’m sure it took 10 minutes to get me that pissed off, the bag sat. And sat, and sat. Everyone in while TSA man would see it, make a call and then go back to annoying other passengers.
And, every once in a while an agent would walk over, get directed by the same TSA guy to “check the bag” and, I can’t lip read but the old “Not my job” motions are universal, would look at the bag, look at the dude and laugh a bit and walk away.
Damn good thing we weren’t late. Yet. About to lose my mind I yelled to my kid, “Hey, leave bag we’ll buy new clothes when we get there”. He looked at me like I was crazy, which I was, “MY computer and iPad are in there”. Fine. This got me a few looks from the TSA and finally the dude with the Tucks pads came over and wiped down the bags. We were explosive AND hemorrhoid free and.. free to go.
Time elaspsed in TSA creening, 75 minutes, or 1/3 of the time we would actually spend in the air flying 2000 miles. Weird huh.
And, just to put shit in perspective, at no time, not once did one of the TSA dumbshits ever talk to me or to anyone. If was nervous, anxious, worried about the 64 balloons of heroin I was muleing to San Francisco in my colon, nothing.
I’m just going to say, flying out of Israel, the didn’t even open a bag or look at my travel document, other than a passing glance. What they did do, engage me in a 5 minute conversation about my trip and the nature of my travel. A conversation I learned later with a trained profiler who knows what to look for.
Maybe it wouldn’t work here because, by the time you get to the TSA, you’ve been nickled and dimed, have waited in a couple endless lines and are so pissed off that every other emotion would be lost.
This isn’t the case where the terrorists win, this is a case where we’ve put an elaborate show of security that really, doesn’t do what we think it does. Sorry gang, profiling is the only secure way to do it.
After a 20 minute wait in the coffee line, the vantage point from which I could see them boarding my flight and my three panic stricken kids staring at me.
I remember being in my teens and 20’s and enjoying flying. One of the reasons, the air-waitresses, aka stewardess were hot. That’s why PanAm might work as a serious. They had some cute gals back then. Now I’m pushing 50, those 30 something flight attendents all have 40 years on the job and are still working, only now.. they’re a little bitter about the vocational choice that had them essentially fetching cokes and acting out safety announcements three times a day for almost half a century. They’re a little scary now. Like your mean old bitter Grandma, the one with no sense of humor. Like my Grandma, who can best be described as “tough”, and that’s about as nice as I can get with that broad
Honestly, when the lady came over and asked me if I wanted a breakfast sandwich, after my experiences with flying these days, can you blame me for reacting with “Now what’s that gonna cost me”.
She wasn’t amused.
Well, after all the drama we arrived, but I gotta tell you, I’d be happy to never fly again, sad too it used to be so fun.
