When we left out of Bozeman headed for Atlanta the weather report was moderate winds and party cloudy skies in ATL. Those turned into gale force winds, and huge-ass thunderheads. I think one of them actually looked like my third grade teacher....
Anyway, I was thinking "so much for partly cloudy" as I was cinching my seat belt tighter when the captain came on the p.a., said it was going to be rough and for the flight attends to sit the fuck down!
We flew through a thunder cell. This was not fun. It wasn't as bad as the Ireland fiasco, but it wasn't far from it. People were white-knuckling whatever they could get their hands on and literally screaming in terror as the plane would drop or be violently thrown side to side. I guess some people pay for this type of thing at amusement parks, but I'm not particularly sadistic in this regard and didn't enjoy it much. At least nobody was puking.
This was on a 757 and so I'm thinking the whole time - now what did Mrs. Bling! and Bling! me about tolerances? What about those rivets and stress fractures, etc. etc. as the wing is "cycling." That's a nice way of saying that it reminded me of a diving board after a fat bastard just went off into the deep end. And nobody says much when your iPod is floating off your lap.
But, yes....we made it....to another airport. Mainly because after flying through the cell it was decided that it was too dangerous to land. We made it to a regional airport and waited to get re-fueled (Bling! does this sound familiar?). They wouldn't let us off the plane so I was walking around and started talking to the captain. He was pulling up the weather radar on his do-hickey and was showing me the huge-ass red cell that we just flew through. I couldn't tell, but I think he was actually bragging a little bit. I wanted to wring his neck.
Anyway, I just wanted to say a quick thank you to Bling! and Mrs. Bling! for all the tin files and things they have told me over the years. I put it to good use up there.
But it wasn’t over, yet….because we flew back to ATL and of course all the connecting flights were either gone or cancelled. So there was about…oh…the entire population of Georgia at the airport trying to get their bags, a hotel, a car, something to eat, you name it.
Delta already had me re-booked on the first flight out and a voucher for a discount at a hotel. So I called the hotel and they wouldn’t answer the phone….at all…..ever… so I gave up and scrambled for the “courtesy” phone wall and began calling all the hotels in the area. I lucked out (?) and got a roach-infested flea-bag hotel for $100.00. Now all I had to do was grab a shuttle.
Let me tell you that ATL has got the most fucked up, ass-backwards, inefficient shuttle and bus system I have ever seen at an airport. It was a disaster. It was crowded to the point of not being able to move, everybody was pissed off, and nobody could get to their shuttles because nobody knew where they would park, there were no lines, it was complete chaos, and it was hot. Isn’t that a great combo??
After being pissed off for another hour or so I finally gave up and grabbed a taxi. I got to the roach motel about 1:00am and then was able to get a pizza delivered (I hadn’t eaten in about 12 hours at this point) and crashed about 2:00am. BTW, did I mention that the floor at the hotel was slimy? It was rather disgusting and of course my luggage was “in transit” and I had no fresh clothes after sweating my balls off at the shuttle service.
You might recall I said I had the first flight out and I finally got crashed about 2:00am. So after four hours of broken sleep I made it to the airport to grab the flight. I obviously still haven’t appeased the travel gods.
No comments:
Post a Comment