Inadvertent symbolism
First off, here's the inadvertently symbolic moment.
Now for some contextualization and decoding.
I took this picture on Friday at around 3 pm. "But [Pangea]," you say, "weren't you supposed to be on a plane most of the way to Chicago on Friday at 3 pm? Why were you instead apparently on some garbage-laden and seaweed-strewn California beach?"
A good question! In brief, I was brutally failed by my usual airline of choice, one on which I have 4 free domestic flights coming to me with frequent flier miles, the one on which I was supposed to be flying. The short version, in which I will minimize my feelings of impotent rage, is that at 5 am on Friday I got an e-mail saying that my original 11:22 flight was canceled due to mechanical issues (although I suspect that they were just undersold and moved everyone to the next flight, which was then at 100%). So I was rebooked on the 12:45, and boarded at 12:15 and we were delayed leaving the gate due to baggage loading and then pulled out a ways and sat for a while as they tried to determine the small mechanical discrepancy and as I was now in a middle seat (I always take the aisle, but rebooking left me no choice) I got to hear sad complaints from the guy to my right and woman to my left, both of whom had just flown in from Sydney and had also been scheduled on the 11:22 and were very sad about having their journeys extended. Businessman to the right had also been bumped out of first class, so was especially pissy. It was decided we would return to the gate, and uniformed mechanics started popping in and out of the plane.
What I surely *should* have done at this point was called the airline and rebooked on the next flight. But I was trying to stay zen-ish, deep breathing and not focusing on the passage of time, and so when all the deadheading airline employees got up and prepared to get off the plane, thus alerting me to the fact that that plane was not going anywhere, it was already 2:05 and the next plane had left. To switch to the 4 pm flight, my outsourced friend told me, would require giving up my seat on this one, and I still had hopes that the plane I was on would take off sooner than the 4 pm. How little did I know, because at 2:30 they took the plane out of service, and everyone rushed over to the customer service desk to get on the 4 pm and I meanwhile decided to get the hell out of there and salvage some of the day. Because the whole point of flying in on Friday was to maximize socializing, once more, with dinner with some and drinks with others and getting in to my host's place after midnight and then having a blank early morning there seemed pointless.
So I rebooked on the 7 am and called a friend who lives not far from the airport in Manhattan Beach, who was just putting on clothes and headed out to lunch and I said, "wait for me! And come with me to the beach!" This is one of the reasons why I don't check bags, and one airport shuttle (delayed) and $1 in long-term parking and one slightly slow highway journey later, I found myself with a belly full of fish taco and strolling on the beach. Where I encountered my crushed yet still smiling balloon friend, with the ominous shadow of the failed trip looming over him, and pinned to the ground when he was meant to be flying, but still resiliently trying to put a good face on it even while somewhat deflated. See -- just like me!
Late Friday night I decided to cancel my Chicago trip -- it was going to be less than 36 hours, if all planes took off and landed when they were supposed to. Which is ok if you're flying an hour or two, but not 4+. And I'm headed out again super-early Thursday to give a talk in New York. And I realized that this weekend's Chicago snow might have caused problems getting me back to LA in time to teach on Monday. So I guess it's ok in some respects that I ended up not going. But I'm pretty bummed out about it, and yesterday's repeat day at the beach, spent watching birdies and reading and napping, only partly made up for all the seeing of old friends that I'm not doing even as I type (big brunch/shower thing that I'm missing on the South Side). At least I finally get to go back again to the Hollywood Farmer's Market and get more Swiss chard -- I've been thwarted one way or another for the last four weeks.
By the way, yesterday I checked the status of all the late morning and afternoon flights for my not-so-beloved airline, and that 12:45 flight didn't take off until 7:30 pm and the 4 pm flight I was going to rebook onto didn't take off until 8:28 pm so it's good that I got the hell out of there!
Now for some contextualization and decoding.I took this picture on Friday at around 3 pm. "But [Pangea]," you say, "weren't you supposed to be on a plane most of the way to Chicago on Friday at 3 pm? Why were you instead apparently on some garbage-laden and seaweed-strewn California beach?"
A good question! In brief, I was brutally failed by my usual airline of choice, one on which I have 4 free domestic flights coming to me with frequent flier miles, the one on which I was supposed to be flying. The short version, in which I will minimize my feelings of impotent rage, is that at 5 am on Friday I got an e-mail saying that my original 11:22 flight was canceled due to mechanical issues (although I suspect that they were just undersold and moved everyone to the next flight, which was then at 100%). So I was rebooked on the 12:45, and boarded at 12:15 and we were delayed leaving the gate due to baggage loading and then pulled out a ways and sat for a while as they tried to determine the small mechanical discrepancy and as I was now in a middle seat (I always take the aisle, but rebooking left me no choice) I got to hear sad complaints from the guy to my right and woman to my left, both of whom had just flown in from Sydney and had also been scheduled on the 11:22 and were very sad about having their journeys extended. Businessman to the right had also been bumped out of first class, so was especially pissy. It was decided we would return to the gate, and uniformed mechanics started popping in and out of the plane.
What I surely *should* have done at this point was called the airline and rebooked on the next flight. But I was trying to stay zen-ish, deep breathing and not focusing on the passage of time, and so when all the deadheading airline employees got up and prepared to get off the plane, thus alerting me to the fact that that plane was not going anywhere, it was already 2:05 and the next plane had left. To switch to the 4 pm flight, my outsourced friend told me, would require giving up my seat on this one, and I still had hopes that the plane I was on would take off sooner than the 4 pm. How little did I know, because at 2:30 they took the plane out of service, and everyone rushed over to the customer service desk to get on the 4 pm and I meanwhile decided to get the hell out of there and salvage some of the day. Because the whole point of flying in on Friday was to maximize socializing, once more, with dinner with some and drinks with others and getting in to my host's place after midnight and then having a blank early morning there seemed pointless.
So I rebooked on the 7 am and called a friend who lives not far from the airport in Manhattan Beach, who was just putting on clothes and headed out to lunch and I said, "wait for me! And come with me to the beach!" This is one of the reasons why I don't check bags, and one airport shuttle (delayed) and $1 in long-term parking and one slightly slow highway journey later, I found myself with a belly full of fish taco and strolling on the beach. Where I encountered my crushed yet still smiling balloon friend, with the ominous shadow of the failed trip looming over him, and pinned to the ground when he was meant to be flying, but still resiliently trying to put a good face on it even while somewhat deflated. See -- just like me!
Late Friday night I decided to cancel my Chicago trip -- it was going to be less than 36 hours, if all planes took off and landed when they were supposed to. Which is ok if you're flying an hour or two, but not 4+. And I'm headed out again super-early Thursday to give a talk in New York. And I realized that this weekend's Chicago snow might have caused problems getting me back to LA in time to teach on Monday. So I guess it's ok in some respects that I ended up not going. But I'm pretty bummed out about it, and yesterday's repeat day at the beach, spent watching birdies and reading and napping, only partly made up for all the seeing of old friends that I'm not doing even as I type (big brunch/shower thing that I'm missing on the South Side). At least I finally get to go back again to the Hollywood Farmer's Market and get more Swiss chard -- I've been thwarted one way or another for the last four weeks.
By the way, yesterday I checked the status of all the late morning and afternoon flights for my not-so-beloved airline, and that 12:45 flight didn't take off until 7:30 pm and the 4 pm flight I was going to rebook onto didn't take off until 8:28 pm so it's good that I got the hell out of there!
posted by Pangea at 9:33 AM
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