Airport blogging

NOTE: This post has nothing to do with science...it is essentially a rant about unsatisfactory traveling circumstances.

Let's see....it is now Friday night, about 9:20pm and we are sitting in JFK airport in New York City (i just took that photo at left). Yesterday (Thursday) morning, we left San Francisco at a little after noon, although we were supposed to leave at 9am. Delta Airlines says it was weather but I am skeptical. I think that their airline just sucks.

Let me back up for a moment....we are trying to make it to Buffalo, NY to visit some family and friends of mine (this is where I grew up). Why would you fly all the way to New York City and then backwards back to the west to Buffalo you may ask. Because Buffalo is one of those crappy little cities that you can't get to direct from anywhere outside a 800 mile radius. We flew right over the damn place on the way to New York.

So....we landed at JFK last night too late to make our original flight to Buffalo. The last flight, which we were on standby, was then mysteriously canceled. We weren't the only ones screwed....pretty much everyone who was trying to make a connection at JFK got hosed as well. Then we had to stand in a very long line of very unhappy people to find out when we would actually leave. And apparently airlines no longer get you a hotel room....sweet....we have to find a place to stay.

But wait....there's more! Now we head down to baggage claim to get our bags that never got put on the flight to Buffalo (since it never happened). They don't know where they are. Excellent. They find them after about an hour and half....I think if they would've simply let me behind those doors saying AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY I could have found them in 5 minutes! Miraculously, our and many others bags are found. People erupted with screams of joy and excitement.

Then we try and find a motel....we ended up about 30 minutes to the east on Long Island. I'm pretty certain that this motel service at JFK is in cahoots with the taxi companies so they can drive people like us who don't know anything wherever they want. Our cabbie even pretended to not know where the place was....yeah, right.

On a positive note, we ended up hanging out with some good friends who live in Brooklyn all day today. It was a beautiful day and we had a nice big lunch with some beers at a streetside cafe. So, it wasn't all bad. As an aside, we tried calling these same friends last night to crash, but alas it was too late and they had gone to bed.

So...now we are sitting waiting for our flight...that was supposed to be leaving right about now. It is now theoretically scheduled to depart at 10:30pm. I am tracking our plane which is coming in from Virginia or something....it is in the air. We are being positive that it might happen tonight.

If not, we know some other people in NYC and have already alerted them that we may be calling them to hang out tonight and who knows how long after that.

The key to getting through something like this is to be with a travel partner. When one of you sinks to a low of frustration...the kind of state where you feel like fire-bombing the place...that the other person stay relatively upbeat and productive. As long as the two of you stay out of phase everything will be fine. If the both of you sink to a low together, you're done for.

Good times.


p.s. Delta Airlines sucks