Off again on business, this time to a convention in Colorado Springs. I headed out a day early to explore.
That explains why I was up at 4:15 on a Tuesday morning and why I was riding in a stretch limo all by myself by 5:00. (It doesn’t explain why I forgot to turn off the house alarm and so suddenly closed the door in the limo driver’s face as he was reaching for my suitcase.)
I was dropped off at the United terminal at 5:45. As usual, I was told to “have a safe flight.” I took this to heart and did my part by not opening any doors or firing any weapons while we were airborne.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen O’Hare as empty as it was this morning. There were no lines at security and I was at my gate by 6:00. Three women in United uniforms were working behind the desk. A young woman was sitting about 15 feet from them talking loudly into her cell phone about the “very nice” people at United who ignored her request and bumped her off a flight last night and another this morning without helping her or explaining anything to her and she had to walk all the way to the other end of the airport because that’s the only place they have “overnight stuff” and she was going to call United as soon as she got home to complain about how she was treated. Meanwhile, the three women pointedly ignored her. The young woman finally hung up and wandered off to parts unknown.
About two minutes later, a guy walked up to one of the women and began swearing at her. He was pointing to his foot (he was wearing flip-flops) and yelling that she had just turned and walked away from him when he’d told her he was dripping blood all over the place. Apparently, he’d cut his foot just before boarding and the United employees, and this woman in particular, had offered no help of any sort and hadn’t even held the plane while he took care of his foot and so he’d missed his flight. During the entire five minutes of his rant, the woman behaved as though he didn’t exist. He finally stormed off swearing.
I sat nearby and watched the show while eating a cranberry/orange muffin from which all the taste had been removed. Then I noticed that the gate number on my boarding pass didn’t match the information on the screen by the desk. This gave me an opportunity to deal with the women myself. I walked to the counter and stood there for at least a minute while the three of them ignored me and complained about passengers who “get drunk and wear flip-flops and then expect us to take care of everything.” Finally one of the women, without looking in my direction, said “Do you have a question?” in a voice that left me no doubt that I was way out of line for existing. Several snarky answers occurred to me, but I refrained. She answered my question, and I wandered to my new gate for a pleasant two-hour wait.
The plane to Denver was packed, and I got wedged against the window by a large man who dominated the armrest, not out of rudeness but out of necessity. Not that this made the flight any more pleasant for me.
I had 35 minutes between flights in the Denver airport. I bought a cookie and a bottled water and found my gate. If I had been lacking convincing evidence that this is a silly world, I found it here. The “gate” was divided into six lanes by post and strap dividers, and several of the separate passages were marked as different gates. (The one with the piece of blue carpet was reserved for first-class passengers and Mileage-Plus members. Those people really get the perks.)
There were three flights boarding at the same time. The woman announcing the flights had an intercom at her disposal and used it upon occasion, but most of the time she just yelled and very few people could hear her over the noise of the airport, so very few people had any idea what was going on. She would call for one flight and tell those people to walk down a particular lane. Then, before they got out of the way, she’d call for another flight and have them walk down a different lane. No matter what lane we walked down, all of us had to check in with her at the same podium and walk through that same door on the right. She wasn’t taking everybody from one flight and then going on to another one. All fights were loading at the same time. But here’s the thing. If anybody happened to walk down a lane not particularly designated for his or her flight, the woman made them walk back and return to her down the correct lane. It made no sense whatsoever. When we finally got through the door, we walked down a flight of steps to a long hallway off of which doors led to the tarmac where another, friendlier woman would look at our boarding passes and direct us to the proper airplane.
I think the flight attendant on this 20-minute trip was trying to make up for surliness of her coworkers. She was wearing gigantic neon-green sunglasses as she greeted us, and she referred to the pre-flight safety talk as her “safety dance.” I sat by a window on the right side of the plane and had a great view of the mountains.
I’d reserved a small SUV from Budget, but the Budget desk was empty. A guy at the Enterprise desk directed me down to the Avis desk where I filled out the paperwork. By 12:30, I was in my Jeep Liberty and on my way to adventure.