Something special in the air

Damn, my butt is sore.

I was up around 4:15a, to get to Sacto International in time for my 6:30a flight.

The flight was overbooked. They offered a free, transferrable pass to anywhere in the US for folks who were willing to be bumped. Hmmmm. I’m not meeting anyone. As long as I get into Knoxville at a decent hour, I don’t have a problem with that. I went up, but was told the earliest they could get me to Knoxville was 8:30p. That was too late for me — I had work to do tonight before the meeting. Ah, well.

Four hour flight from Sacto to O’Hare.

A few years back, I zonked my tailbone. It’s long since healed, but it gets sore pretty easily. Jet airline seats seem custom-made to enhance that effect. I’m good for a couple of hours, then I start to squirm …

I had some time to kill at O’Hare. Picked up some trinkets for Kitten, grabbed a bite to eat … and looked for a book. I’d burned through the three paperbacks I’d brought.

Zilch. Zero. Nothing I wanted to read, except for one tome that was almost of a size to be its own checked luggage. Since I wasn’t checkng anything, my hands were already full. Hrm.

About an hour before my 2:30p flight, I showed up at the gate. Sat around for a bit. It was a busy gate. The United O’Hare/Knoxville flight is on United Express, out of the F-gates, which support all the eleventy-zillion small locations like Knoxville, Peoria, White Plains, Hartford, and the like. They’re all little Canadair 2×2 jets, which you get into via the tarmac (just like in all the old movies).

So there were usually five or six flights up on the board for the gate, and there might be two or more loading at any given moment.

Come the 2:30p time, we all file down the stairs, march across the tarmac, climb up into our little plane …

I smelled something oddly electrical as I walked down the aisle, but little planes often smell funny.

We sat there a little while, then closed up, got pushed back, trundled out onto the taxiway, turned around, and trundled back.

Hmmmm. Circuit breaker problems. Just a few minutes, folks, while maintenance comes up to check up on it.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Butt beginning to get sore again.

Some maintenance folks came into the plane, went up into the cockpit, tried some switches.

Well, resetting the circuit breakers didn’t help, they’re going to have to actually replace the parts. And they have to find out if the parts are in stock or not. Hang in there, folks.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

After about another 20 minutes (and, mercifully, the a/c was on, though not enough), they ushered us all off the plane and back to the terminal. They’d let us know what was up Real Soon Now. Seasoned travellers predicted that it was going to be cancelled.

We could see the plane out on the tarmac. It was not a beehive of activity.

A bit later, the flight went back up on the board, with a time of 4:05p. Hmmm. About 45 minutes. I went and grabbed some food from the McD’s down the corridor and brought it back.

Around quarter of, I overheard the gal at the counter say that the 4:05 time was really meant to be when the next status report would be, not when the plane was rescheduled for. Joy.

At 4:00p the heavens opened up. An announcement was made that all O’Hare traffic was grounded. We watched planes line up, not disgorging their passengers, outside.

Obviously, no maintenance folks working on our plane.

The rain let up after about 20 minutes. No status was given, but other planes began to come in, letting off their passengers.

I called Margie. She suggested I call up United’s 800 number and bitch about the whole lack-of-status thing, which was, to be sure, pretty irritating.

As soon as I got off the phone, at about 4:30, they announced that, huzzah, the plane would board at 4:45.

In fact, they beat that. We headed out (into a drizzle) at around 4:40. Everyone was very happy.

And then we sat. And we sat. Seemed that, with the weather, a new course needed to be negotiated with ATC. And we needed more fuel. A fuel truck rolled over to us, fueled one side, rolled around, fueled the other side.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Finally, around 5:30, we pushed back from the terminal. Huzzah!

We turned around and … got into line. Seems the airport was still recovering from shutting everything down for about 20 minutes an hour or so ago.

Creep. Creep. Creep.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

My butt was getting sore. Remember my sore butt? That is what this anecdote was all about, after all.

Finally, at 6-freeling-30 in the p.m., we took off.

We were four hours later than scheduled.

We were nearly two hours since we’d gotten on the plane.

The flight was an hour and a half. Which put total butt-on-plane time for the day at way over 8 hours. Ouch. And you can’t do much shifting around in those narrow little seats.

Which, by the way, put me into Knoxville at 9 p.m., Eastern.

Damn, my butt is sore. Though, mercifully, it gets better very quickly once I’m off the plane.