Where were we...ah yes. I had just waited 2 hours (almost) to get my luggage and had approximately 30 minutes to grab my bags, recheck them, and hustle my ass to Terminal 3 from Terminal 8 & board (while I figured my flight was probably already boarding anyways). I said bye to my new-found American friends and scurried to put my bags on the rechecked conveyor belt. I run up to the woman in charge of this task and ask her if I simply put my bags on the belt...? She asked me where I was going and I said Indianapolis (p.s. every time I said Indianapolis my voice went up two octaves, I swear, because of the hope that I was going to finally make it home) and she said yes just put the bags there. I threw the bag on like a sack of sand and ran back over to ask her where I should go next. Working at the JFK airport, she was naturally not a native American and judging from her accent I'm pretty sure she was Swedish...or something similar. I handed her my ticket (EXPRESS ticket!) and she goes (as snarkily as possible), "oh....dees sayz dat you are eh-go-eeng to Detroit fehst. You should have told me daht." And shrugged without a care in the world.
......WHAT?! You're kidding me. I, watching my bag slip into the land of luggage, probably never to be seen again, ask her panicked what to do since I just put my bag on the belt following her non-chalant instructions. Her response? "Oh well, eet wheel get dare eventually."
I think I stood there mouth gaping for a minute, just blinking at her and imagining mauling the shit out of her like a lion with a chicken carcass...but finally realized I now had 25 minutes to get to my flight. I asked her, defeated, where I was supposed to go for the damned connection to Detroit, and she pointed me to the air-train. Luckily the airtrain goes in a circle around the airport, and T8 is the last terminal, so I only had to wait 3 stops. I get off the air-train, run outside (following the signs), run back inside, and realize I'm at the Delta check-in counter, that is swarmed with atleast 50 people in line for security. While my fluorescent orange "Express Connection" envelope was given to me with good intentions, I had to succomb to logic and admit that the stupid-ass "express" ticket was as useful to me in this situation as a Bounty super-absorbant paper towel in a hurricane. Plus by this time it was 6:15 and my flight was set to take off at 6:30. Even more defeatedly, I kicked my carry on luggage to let out some frustration and hauled it caveman style to the check-in counter. I kept my cool, though, because my Dad had checked online and told me there was a flight from JFK to Indy at 8:30, and I could arrive at midnight. And bypass the whole birthplace of Eminem debacle. This shining star allowed me to maintain hope in the black-hole that was T3. I asked one of the attendants who was organizing the lines if I was in the right place to get put on a different connecting flight and he said yes. He also grabbed my information and wrote down some sort of conformation code to use once I got to the desk. I waited in line for atleast twenty minutes and was really hoping for the middle-aged woman who seemed understanding and normal (as opposed to the other two people who looked like they were as interested in their job as watching paint dry...also not American, very Jamaican. And very hard to understand.) Of course I don't get her, I get the barely-legal Rastafarian who asks me lazily how he could help me (with as much conviction as OJ). I try to shorten my story and withhold my frustration in order to receive optimal assistance but he says "uh yah, ya gonna haveta go to dat line ova dere, man, dat is for Special Assistance" (.......he didn't say man. But I wouldn't have been surprised) My shining star of hope was starting to fade and I wanted to punch Old Man Rivers in the face for telling me this was the right line. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back.
I go over to Special Assistance. Wait in line. Get infuriated because they keep asking who (from the other lines) has a flight at 7, so they can get them checked in and on their flight on time. Finally I literally yelled, "MY FLIGHT IS AT 6:30 WHICH WAS TEN MINUTES AGO. WHO THE HELL IS GONNA HELP ME??" It was not effective, even in the least bit. Nobody even looked at me awkwardly and judging. I'm worse than psycho-crazy, I was invisible. I wish life was more like the movies, where you go balls-to-the-wall and suddenly the world falls in to place so you can end things on a high note in only 90 minutes. I finally get to the counter, recount my sob-story, including my lost luggage, and ask her if she can please give me some of this Special Assistance. She asked me who the flight was with from Madrid and I begrudgingly utter American Airlines with the deepest scowl on my face possible without risking my eyebrows flying right off my face. She tells me that "even if she wanted to help me she couldn't do anything, and I had to go back to American to change the flight." That part kills me. Even if she wanted to...whatabitch. I hope she got coal in her stocking, and then transferred to work for American Airlines until she retires.
So it's back to Terminal 8. With EFFING American Airlines to deal with. I had held it together thus far. And luckily I had read in Cosmo on the 12 hour flight that if you're about ready to cry, and you don't want to, you can look into a bright light and it will subdue the tears...so I kept staring up into the ceiling and it worked. I got to the elevator to go back up to the air-train and trying to muster up some sort of anger and intimidation to bully my way onto the 8:30 flight. Right before the elevator came a family of about 8 are hurrying with two strollers to try and catch the elevator too. They were all so happy and peaceful to be together...and I was trying to hard to stare bullets through the Halogens lamps...but I couldn't fight it anymore. Before the doors even finish opening I start sobbing. I let the family get on the elevator first while trying to wipe away my tears to make it less obvious, but by that time there was a steady stream of tears with no signs of stopping and I was forgetting to breath so I was also gasping for air. On the elevator. It was so awkward. Imagine a happy family of eight giggling and thinking about sugar plums taking up 95% of the elevator and then Pathetic Patty in the corner sobbing for God knows what reason and is scaring the children. And I'm Patty. God. (side note: while writing this I have actually started crying again, just by remembering this horrifying experience...I swear in 15 years I'll be in therapy still reminiscing this trauma.)
The air-train journey wasn't super pleasant either. I was the only Caucasian female (and non-Jamaican) on the entire shuttle and everybody was staring at me. I was convinced in the five minutes the ride took that I was going to get sold into sex-trafficking or simply murdered for organs. Looking back on the situation with a clearer head, everybody was probably staring at me because I was also the only one on the train who was crying uncontrollably and looking like a complete fool.
I make it to the American Airlines desks and end up waiting in a long line. The time gives me a chance to try to stop crying (which I kind of did...my eyes were practically swollen shut and I had managed to control my tears enough to just hang out with my eyeballs) and scope out the employees. There was an older woman working who was talking to an Indian guy for like twenty minutes about his brother and his cousin's dog or something, so I knew I wanted her. Someone with compassion. I couldn't read the others but I knew the one I didn't want was the third desk, which was a shorter French woman who didn't speak great English but seemed to have something large and obtrusive stuck up her rear. She looked like Edna from The Incredibles.
Terrifying, right?
I kept my fingers crossed for the old lady but she was a talker so by the time my turn came she wasn't available yet. Of course with my luck I get angry Edna. I told the girl behind me she could go...I wasn't going to risk it. The next available woman seemed to be Latina and I couldn't figure out her emotional capacity but I said a quick prayer and asked God to let this be part of the plan. I go up and I start explaining everything slowly. After I finish she says, "so whose fault was this the flight was delayed?" That's when I lost it and started bawling again. Really ugly crying. If I had missed my layover and had had even a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this FORSAKEN city, I wouldn't be so upset. If I dicked up, that's my fault and I would deal with it. But I felt like a victim. All of this bullshit kept happening and it wasn't stopping. I felt like roadkill. It's bad enough you get hit the first time, you don't need to be flattened into a pancake. So I'm sobbing and gasping and not breathing and she's trying to tell me it'll be okay honey, let me see what I can do. She looks at all the information and tells me that there is a flight at 8:30 p.m., but it's from La Guardia. If it's even possible I'm sobbing even harder. I keep asking her about a flight from JFK that night but everything is booked. I know less than nothing about New York and its airports, so the LAST thing I wanted to do was switch airports and get lost McCauley Culkin style. For one, he had his father's credit card and $2,000 in cash. It would have been less terrifying but I had, literally, $5 in my wallet and about $20 in my bank account. Ironically I had a check for 400 euros in my purse but that was absolutely worthless in this situation. I had $7 when I landed but I gave a girl $2 to use the payphone and make some phone calls because she didn't have a cell phone & I was in a jolly Christmas mood, ecstatic to make it home on time. That bit me in the ass.
The woman looks at other flights and tells me the first available flight out is at 8:40 a.m. tomorrow, from La Guardia. I did not want to change airports but my tune changed when she told me the first flight out from JFK was at 5:30 p.m. That made me bawl again. She told me not to worry, that they would give me a voucher for dinner, a voucher for breakfast, a voucher for a hotel, and a voucher for a car to the airport since it was not to JFK. This makes me look like a 2-year old but I was wailing at this point because all of this was not what I wanted to hear. I didn't want ANY vouchers. I wanted to be home. Right then. Or preferrably 3 hours before that when I was supposed to get home. She had kind of accepted that I wasn't goint to stop crying, and I had kind of accepted that my body was revolting against me, so we both accepted the water works and moved on with our transactions. While I was sobbing into my sleeve I hear "aww...don't cry...it'll be okay..." Next to me, Edna was fighting with a fiesty girl my age about another missed flight...but she was nice & trying to be supportive. Unfortunately I couldn't register that much information so I just stared at her and kept crying. In the meantime my Latina starts the computer work to get my ticket changed and prints it out and says, proudly, "Here you go...this is your receipt for the ticket. 8:40 a.m. to Minneapolis."
.......are you effing serious. I knew she was trying her hardest but was clearly a few cards short of a full deck. I meekly told her it was INDIANAPOLIS...even saying the city made the tears come back...but she deleted it and put the information in again. She prints out the new ticket and hands it to me. I look and it says 8:40 a.m. to Washington Dulles, IAD. I refrained from telling her that if I wanted to go to Washington Dulles I would walk there on foot from JFK and simply pointed out that Indianapolis *cry* was IND, not IAD. She had deleted the ticket so many times (OMEN) that the system shut down or something so she had to call her supervisor over. He actually started repremanding her for giving me so many vouchers, but luckily she was super sassy and didn't let him get any word in edgewise. Latina had my back. We had a mutal understanding and a bond....plus I'm pretty sure she had a handful of my DNA all over her work station in the form of saline tears. So she ripped his ass for not knowing what he was talking about, went into Mom-mode and labelled all of my vouchers, and told me how to get to the hotel. We still hadn't figured out the luggage situation, though, so she grabs her ID tag and climbs over the counter, leaving her desk and the long line of disgruntled fliers, grabs my hand, and walks me downstairs to talk to luggage people directly. She asked if they could pull my luggage but they said I was showing up in the system as "still travelling" so they weren't allowed. They assured me that my luggage would be on the flight the next day at 6:30 a.m....and humorously enough would probably beat me to Indianapolis. My first question was why I wasn't on that flight at 6:30. I offered to cuddle with the luggage but apparently it's cold and illegal.
I head over to an area with some seats and finally make the call to my family to let them know what's happening. Just hearing my Dad's voice spins me off into another sobbing non-breathing tangent...luckily he gave the phone to Jeri who went into military mode telling me to get to the hotel and get to sleep. Period. By the time I hung up I was determined to use my $12 for food for dinner at the airport and use what little street smarts I have to navigate to the hotel. I found myself having pretty severe culture shock, though, because everyone was staring at me while I was yelling/crying on the phone with my parents. In Spain nobody knows what I say. All of a sudden everyone knows my business and was annoyingly happy. It really bugged me until I realized that I had parked myself right infront of one of the arrival gates which is arguably one of the happiest places in the world for people at the arrival gates. Except Pathetic Patty who was bawling on the phone and being a Debbie Downer. Later, while scoping out food I found the girl that was fighting with Edna and asked if she got everything figured out. While grabbing food I (more rationally and finally not crying) vented my whole situation to her and made plans to eat dinner together. She lives in New York but is from (and was on her way to) Bermuda. I texted Tim that I had found a friend and would call when I was on my way to the hotel. Apparently as parents you don't appreciate receiving vague texts about how your stranded daughter has made friends in 30 seconds in a strange city with someone and is eating dinner with them. I found that out when I finally got home :)
Bermuda girl (I forget her name by now :/) "helped" me to the air-train and I was feeling better about life. I follow the signs to the hotel shuttles outside but don't see any shuttles that go to the Double Tree Hotel. I go to the information booth and tell the guard I was supposed to ask for the shuttle to the DTH. He says, dripping with sass, "well, it'd probably be a good idea to call them to send a shuttle!" ......okay, how do I do that? "Well you've gotta go back up [a mile back] where you got off the train and call from the phone that is there." I asked him what the number was and without missing a beat he informed me, smugly, that the code was 69. I said thank you, half heartedly, and turned around, eyes rolling in the back of my head wondering how the hell my life has slipped so far into the crapper. As if missing two flights wasn't bad enough, and being stuck in NYC, I was getting hit on by old black men in charge of hotel shuttles. I walked back the five miles and noticed the phone kiosk. I picked up the phone, looked at the list of hotels.....and I'll be damned if the number for the Double Tree wasn't 69. Maybe, luckily for me, the man was a little bit of a perv and knew the # off the top of his head. I doubt he didn't get a little joy from that though. I probably would have.
I go back downstairs and wait in the cold. All of the shuttles were gutted out mini-buses that were less than reputable looking. They all pretty much looked like this:
....well, without the FREE CANDY sign. But it was equally unnerving.
The Holiday Inn buses were legit, with professional signage on the side and painting. Other hotels weren't as trustworthy....some had duct-taped an 8 1/2 x 11 paper to the side with a printed logo of their hotel. This whole situation petrified me. How shady is it that these rapist-vans come for free and magically take you to where you're supposed to go? I was convinced my body parts were going to be scattered through a cornfield or lake somewhere nearby (side note: after all of this I've decided I watch too many horror movies, and should stop watching Saw so much...) Luckily there was a middle-aged woman who arrived who was also asking for the Double Tree shuttle. The assistant told her it would be very easy to spot because it had a very big ---- on the side of the van. I couldn't hear what he said but I, naturally, assumed he said "tree". We waited another two minutes or so and the woman asked if another shuttle was for the DTH. The assistant, again, assured her that she would know the shuttle because it really did have a huge ----- on the side of the van. I STILL didn't catch it. But was very sure it was a tree.
Eventually the shuttle pulls up. Do you wanna make bets as to what was on the side of the van? Hint: it wasn't a tree.
It was a chocolate chip cookie. A gigantic chocolate chip cookie. Next to it, in huge purple scrolly font, "SWEET RIDE."
This is a more professional version of the JFK shuttle I found on Google from North Carolina. The shuttle I got into looked like the candy van, but it only had the cookie and the phrase Sweet Ride....nothing else. I should have taken a picture but I was too busy calling Jeri to make sure she was on the phone with me the entire drive in case I was kidnapped and/or drugged for my kidneys.
I got to the hotel and it wasn't bad. While the Double Tree is a Hilton hotel, the hotel itself is a little bit...lacking...in the common areas. The elevators & hallways were less than beautiful. A large football-player sized man was hitting on my in the lobby, trying to obtain my room # and give me his phone number, so I avoided contact with him and talked to my mom on the phone until I figured he had made it to his room. Then I quickly booked it upstairs and locked myself in my room. Luckily, the rooms were Hilton. It was so beautiful. I had my own Wolfgang Puck coffee maker with two to-go cups, two capsules for coffee, and two bags of tea. I clicked on some Christmas TV on the big screen and started myself a bath. It was wonderful and for once I forgot about the Christmas Catastrophe of 2011. I went to sleep around 1 a.m. and woke up every fifteen minutes from anxiety until my alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. My personal car was coming at 6 a.m., so I got up and tried to get ready. Unfortunately I didn't pack any legit clothes so I would have more space in my suitcase (especially because I have clothes at home)...but I had no clean underwear and it was bothering me so I figured I had enough time to hand-wash them in the sink. As I'm drying them with the hairdryer I get a call on my cell phone at 5:40 from the driver. He tells me his name is Rashidhasaan or...something...and if I'm going to be ready soon. I told him I had asked for the car at 6 a.m. and he told me that was true but he was already downstairs. I told him (as I'm literally ass-naked) I would do the best I could and aim for 5:50...and he told me he'd see me then, he was driving the white mini-van. No good sentences end with "...look for the white mini-van." Through some miracle I finally got my undies dried, made myself some coffee to-go, and prepared for the white mini-van. It wasn't so bad...it was a very modern white mini and quite new. I approved. And I liked the driver. I told him my sob story without crying and we had a good laugh. He dropped me off at the Delta gates and told me he'd wait until I knew I was at the right spot. Curbside check-in told me I was and I just needed to print my ticket off at the kiosk inside. I waved goodbye to Rashidhasaan and excitedly go inside.
Not surprisingly, this is not the end of my journey. But this post is getting long enough so I think I'll cut it off here and finish it in another post, along with news of being home and perhaps my birthday. :) Until next time!
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