(I'm posting this because I survived it and therefore it's funny
It's also posted in my
livejournal .)
Last night I discovered the joys of sleeping in the airport. Wasn't that fun? Having never done so before, it was definitely an experience. One might say an adventure, even. But I'd rather not do it again any time soon. Thank goodness my flight to Vegas tomorrow is nonstop.
We were delayed in Boston because of bad weather, although I never did see a storm. It sprinkled for about ten minutes and we had some light-colored clouds. Nothing that looked particularly dangerous, but we sat in the plane for three hours before we took off.
They let me get off and ask the attendant at the gate about my connection; she told me I was going to get stranded somewhere. I could stay in Boston or I could go on to Detroit. I had two suitcases, so staying in Boston would have meant calling a cab ($30 each way) and begging Liz to let me sleep in her room. Then I could have taken a 6 am flight the next morning but I'd have had a stop in Detroit anyway. Alternatively, I could stay on the flight to Detroit on the off chance that my connection would be delayed or take a 6:30 flight the next morning directly to Columbus.
I decided to gamble on Detroit. If I were going to have to stop there anyway, I might as well get there earlier rather than later, especially if there were an off chance I'd be able to catch my connection. Consequently I arrived at 11 pm and, predictably, missed my connection by an hour and a half. They put me on the first flight in the morning, at 6:30. They recommended a hotel for $79, but it didn't really seem worth it to pay for a hotel when I was going to have to be back at the airport by 4:30 or so, and I'd have had to take a cab there and back (probably another $30 each way).
The lucky thing was that they checked me in on my flight immediately, so my luggage stayed in the system and I didn't have to pick it up (when I asked the attendant in Boston, she'd told me I'd have to pick it up and keep it overnight; I had no idea how I was supposed to sleep in an airport with two suitcases, a backpack, and a purse without random people stealing things). I didn't have to leave the secure side of the terminal at all, and in the morning I could just walk onto my flight.
I wandered around the terminal until I found my gate. That section of the terminal was under construction and rather abandoned, so I didn't really feel safe sleeping there. I wandered upstairs to the next section and found a gate that was empty but along the main hallway so there would be people around. The airline had given me a voucher for $13 for food, but of course at 11 all the restaurants were closed, so I had a lovely dinner of Doritos and Fritos and grape juice from the vending machines. Then I tried to curl up (why do they have to have those stupid arm rests on airport chairs so you can't lay down across several of them?!) and go to sleep while still holding on to my backpack and purse. I was seriously worried about how I was going to make sure I woke up in time for my flight. I considered putting a sign next to me: "Please wake me up at 5:30." My cellphone battery of course had died so I couldn't ask anyone to call me in the morning. Eventually I discovered that my little mp3 player has an alarm function (I keep discovering things about it that I love), so as long as I turned up the volume really high and slept with headphones on, I could expect it to blast music ("when I looked in your EEEEEYYYYEEES!") at 5:30 and wake me up.
By then it was about 1 am, and it took me a while longer to fall asleep. I woke up again at around 3 freezing my butt off. I had seen some of the attendants handing out blankets and pillows earlier, and I'd found a pillow to put over the armrest so it wasn't digging into my ribs all the time, but I guess discerning airport-sleeping travelers had claimed all the blankets by then. By now my section of the terminal was pretty much abandoned aside of cleaning crew. I wandered around the terminal looking behind desks for blankets; I'm sure somewhere on some security camera they were watching me and wondering why I was peeking behind all the desks, but I didn't find anything. I did find a warmer section of the terminal, but it was even more abandoned than my gate. I felt a little warmer for having walked around for a bit, so I went back and this time found a place where I could prop my feet up in the row of chairs across from me.
My mp3 player woke me up as promised and I went upstairs in search of food. There were a bunch of food places there but of course none of them were open. I decided to walk back to terminal A, which had more restaurants and shops. The Detroit airport has a very cool tunnel thing between terminal A and terminal B/C, with glass walls that light up in time to music. (Apparently the music/light effects were done by Mills James Productions here in Columbus, a place I used to want to work when I was younger.) It was very cool. In terminal A I found a Starbucks and got a pastry and some orange juice, so I got to use my food voucher after all. Then I went back to C and waited about half an hour for my flight.
When I got to Columbus my father was there to greet me but my luggage was not. I was a little confused by that; they'd had all night to transfer it, it wasn't like I'd made my plane by minutes or anything. But they did know where it was and promised to have it delivered to my house (It's here now, which is good, because I have to turn around and repack for tomorrow). I came home and collapsed with my cats on the couch and slept until 2:30, and life was beautiful.
Tomorrow, I get to do it all again, hopefully without sleeping in any airports.
