stuck.
2005-04-01 : 6:15 p.m.

When did America get so run-down and difficult? Nothing will make you more aware of the amazing inconvenience of just about everything like business travel will.

My flight from San Antonio to Atlanta was cancelled. Thankfully, I�m the nerd who actually arrives at the airport 2 hours before my scheduled departure time, as per the airlines� advice. Usually that means a post-check in trip to Starbucks and a leisurely hour cruising cute business-types. But noooooooooooooo, not this time! I get there at 5PM, since my flight leaves a little after 7. The matronly, middle-aged ticket agent (anyone remember when airline employees were almost always attractive, and invariably polite?) curtly informed me that my flight was cancelled, and that she had booked me on an earlier flight. It would be leaving in 25 minutes.

Now, this was Easter Sunday, and apparently, the entire citizenry of Mexico had spent Easter in San Antonio (pillaging our stores like swarming locusts....do they not have stores in Mexico? I can�t imagine going to another country just to shop at Target and Steinmart.) and was now heading home. The line at the security checkpoint stretched all the way to the other end of the terminal.

Still, somehow I managed to get through the line just in time to take off my shoes, unpack my bag, take out my laptop, take off my belt, empty my pockets, go through the metal detector, get my shit back together, put my shoes and belt back on, and make a dash for the gate. Naturally, by the time I get there, my new flight has also been delayed, so all the rushing was pointless.

The gate and the concourse were packed, and it was clear that a number of people had been here for a long, long time.

Once we finally board the plane, I take my seat (which is approximately 9 inches wide). As per FAA regulations pertaining to single travelers who enjoy quiet, I am seated next to an extremely gregarious businessman and directly behind a woman, and her two daughters (one about 5 years old, and one infant). Her husband and several other of their larvae are seated a few rows up, and naturally the children will spend the entire flight walking back and forth between the two parents. The baby can�t walk, but of course, he�ll be too busy shrieking. The whole time. The woman immediately leans her seat all the way back.

The stewardesses are all wide-butted middle-aged women. Not a single one of them can walk past without her ass smacking me in the side of the head. Remember when they were all pretty and kind? Those days are long past. Maybe they�re the same stewardesses....grown old, fat and bitter.

So after two hours of what is perhaps best described as �anti-comfort�, we arrive in Atlanta. Oops! There�s another plane already parked at our gate. It will be just a few minutes, folks, and we do apologize for the delay. Out the window, I can see that it is pouring rain. We roll away to a different gate. It�s not ready. The pilot is really sorry, folks.

We get off the plane, and we find...pandemonium! The Atlanta airport looks like a refugee camp, with people obviously spending the night in the gates and on the concourse. What the hell is going on here? It�s raining, and apparently, Delta�s airplanes are water-soluble. I�ve never heard of flights being cancelled because of rain.

Atlanta�s airport is thoroughly absurd � a theater of cruelty on a soul-breaking scale. And the scale, not the size, is the key to its profound suckiness. DFW is enormous, too, but somehow infinitely less oppressive than Atlanta. Atlanta�s airport consists of five parallel freestanding concourses, marching away from a massive main terminal. The concourses are connected to the terminal and each other by a sort of underground backbone consisting of a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long hallway featuring segments of moving sidewalk that are just far enough apart that you�re STILL exhausted from hauling your luggage between moving sidewalks, and on either side of the corridor, tunnels used by a sort of monorail system. There are stations for this train at extremely distant intervals along the never-ending hallway to nowhere. I thought I was going to be a trooper and walk to baggage claim. HA! Soon, the never-ending hallway disabused me of that foolish notion. Broken, I meekly boarded the train.

The train reminds me of the kind of roller-coaster that jerks forward at high speed, rather than gradually accelerating. Only on the train, you�re standing up, which means that its extremely abrupt accelerations and decelerations provide you with the opportunity to be flung over your luggage and into total stranger. It�s awesome!

The main terminal was looking even more refugee-campish than the concourses. The building itself seems older and dingier...with that kind of dinge that only develops in old and heavily used airports. The light all seems yellow, and everything (everything!) is scuffed up and bears the remains of stickers and labels carelessly ripped off. It reminded me of the Newark airport, which is possibly my least favorite in the world. Newark International Airport looks like America�s lost hopes and failed dreams.

Anyway, we (I am traveling with my coworker Melvin) collect our luggage. In this fact, we are apparently very lucky. The Lost Luggage office sprouts a line that snakes across the massive space.

We head outside to catch a shuttle to the airport. Even outside, this place is a zoo! Also, I guess electricity and gas are really expensive in Atlanta, because neither buildings nor vehicles were sufficiently air conditioned. Anyway, $16 and about 1 hour later, we�re at the hotel. It�s a half-hour after midnight.

The hotel (Embassy Suites) was okay, just another rabbit hutch for business travelers. I was a little surprised that they didn�t provide free internet access, as most suite hotels seem to. The guest services book explained that there is a �nominal charge� for access to their wireless network, and commanded me to see the front desk for details. So I marched right back on down. Now check this out: the �nominal charge� is ten dollars a day. I considered explaining to the nice lady that if my ISP charged that much, I�d be paying over $300 per month for Internet access, and for less than that, I could have a cellular network card and not have to worry about completely irrational price-structures like this one, but....eh...she works at a hotel front desk. What was she going to do about it? What would she even know about it? Nothing and nothing, and it was now after 1 AM. Fuck it, I paid $50 for a week of access to their wireless network. Which, as it turned out, totally sucked. It would freeze up every 60 seconds or so, for about 15 to 30 seconds. This bizarre popup notice was always cropping up. It blew in a big way.

Still, I had a pretty spectacular view of Centennial Park and the lights of downtown Atlanta.

So we were there all week, working hard, and occasionally escaping the hotel for quick forays into downtown Atlanta. Which is surprisingly beautiful. I don�t know what I expected (Scarlet O�Hara?), but I just didn�t expect Atlanta to be so big and modern and shiny.

Which brings us to today. Today, we completed training at noon. I checked out of my room, and Melvin and I decide to head for the airport. We pay another $16 (each) to ride the �LINK� airport shuttle, which is never air conditioned. Upon arrival at the airport we notice that (surprise!) it�s just as busy and chaotic looking as it was when we last left the airport a week ago! We fight our way through a crowd along the length of the Delta ticket counter, which is approximately 16 miles long. At every point along the endless counter, people are lined up in switchbacked queues. We get in the appropriate cattlechute and shuffle forward until we reach the front of the line.

A couple of stations down, two white guys with buzz-cuts in blue suits are checking in. Standing between them is a young man with a broad leather strap around his torso and shackles on his ankles. A federal prisoner being transferred somewhere? Who knows.

Our 6:30 PM flight has naturally been cancelled. Melvin has been booked on a 9 PM flight. I, on the other hand, won�t be leaving Atlanta until 8:30 tomorrow morning. I ask if the airline will pay for a hotel room. No, the surly ticket-hag explains, �weather-related� cancellations are not eligible for hotel vouchers. I look up at the skylight, through which the sun is brightly shining. I look back at the hag. The guy behind me is tapping his foot.

I hate Delta so much.

Anyway.

Melvin won�t even be able to check his bags until 3, so we lumber off to find somewhere to sit down, dragging approximately 16,000 lbs of luggage behind us.

We find an area of the main terminal that features a food court and some shops, which seems nice, until you realize that the food court features 4 restaurants, and most of the shops are in fact the same shop (some scammy outfit called �Hudson News�, one of those Airport newsstand places that sell crappy paperbacks and $8 packs of cigarettes). Anyway, we get some coffee, and sit down to assess the situation. I manage to track down the Obligatory Wall of Phones That Connect You To Nearby Hotels, and manage to get a reservation at a nearby Marriott.

I go back and sit with Melvin until it�s time for him to go check in for his flight, and then drag myself and my shit out to the Ground Transportation Clown Circus, where I catch another un-air conditioned shuttle to the hotel.

So here I am, in another anonymous hotel room. My window looks out on a swimming pool (covered for the winter) and, beyond that, a highway. I can�t see the city or the airport. The clouds are getting very dark.

I miss my boyfriend. I miss home. I miss showering in water from the Edwards Aquifer, rather than this slimy, slightly saline �soft water� that all hotels seem to have.

And I do wonder: what happened to the sleek, strong, efficient America that air travel always signified to me as a boy? Air travel used to have a sort of Eero Saarinen panache to it. It suggested a future that would be even faster, cleaner, and more cosmopolitan than the very modern present.

Now it�s all shabby, and worse than that, chaotic. Airports, as cathedrals of the modern, were supposed to be the very antithesis of chaos. But now airports and airplanes are no longer sleek, cool places. They are loud and obnoxious, like a Mexico City bus station. The stewardesses are fat, old, and rude. The planes creak and rattle like old bones on a cold morning. Concourses that were once sleek, long, open spaces are now partitioned off into various security zones by hastily erected barriers that are precisely the measure of our declining confidence and growing fear. They are a measure of just how third-world America has become.

I miss that old modernist Future. When did we stop believing that, with enough rational effort, tomorrow could be better than today? Probably right around the time we stopped studying math and science so we�d have more time to get in touch with our feelings and protest outside Terri Schiavo�s hospice. I don�t know. We just don�t seem very impressive any more. Have we earned the fearful future we face today?

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last 5 entries:
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because we can't have people DYING! - 2005-05-17
reality check - 2005-05-17
did you get that thing i sent ya? - 2005-05-17
liberals and their fancy "facts"... - 2005-04-26