a sense of joy and then a panic

Me and the headless, armless Goddess of Victory in front of Caesars Palace (I named a character after her in high school, before I realized a shoe company beat me to it).  Uploaded more photos here. 


It was 105 degrees and amusing, for the most part.  I did think the Moving Statues at Caesars were ridiculously kitschy, but the volcano at my hotel (the Mirage) was surprisingly awesome, as were the Bellagio fountains (maybe that's not so much a surprise).  The Venetian was really, really fragrant, the Luxor was lolzy, the Excalibur had a lot of fast food joints (I see why Jennifer wanted to die when she was assigned the Excalibur as inspiration on Top Chef last season), and the MGM Grand was confusingly large.  We were sharing the Mirage with the West Coast Dance Explosion's national finals, so the casino floor was half old people on slot machines and half pre-pubescent girls in really heavy makeup and glamour bikinis. 

The food was good. 

from China.  It was a very eventful trip.  Among other highlights: had all my money stolen, spent 48 hours on a train, probably about as much time on various buses, "climbed" a mountain at 5 a.m. (including bus ride where bus had to stop and put on snow chains and cable car ride of over-population doom), went to a police station three times (to register myself as an alien), climbed probably ten thousand steps total (including some in snow/ice), saw many temples/monasteries, and ate lots of food (the strangest of which were Chinese takes on spaghetti and pizza).  I spent most of the time either in Zhengzhou or around Chengdu.  The main tourist spots I went to were the Shaolin Temple (where it was snowing at the time), the Leshan Giant Buddha (where it briefly rained), and Mount Emei (where it was gently snowing at the peak).  The dramatic weather actually resulted in a very nice atmosphere at each.  I have many pictures, and I may post more later.


I just spent 24 hours in transit.  How's everybody else doing? 

to Kansas City until Sunday.

(first solo road trip, woo!)

"Well, I'm gonna find that son of a bitch that killed you, and I'm gonna give him the hard goodbye.  Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything."
- Marv; Sin City

As we all know, I was supposed to leave New York-La Guardia on Thursday mid-morning, fly to Milwaukee for a brief stop-over, and then fly on to Omaha.  My mother and I were worried about the plane racing the major snowstorm that was coming in from the West.  Our best-case scenario was catching the OmaLink shuttle from the airport and getting to Lincoln that afternoon.  Worst-case scenario was missing the shuttle and staying overnight in an airport motel in Omaha.  If that was looking likely my mother was going to drive to Omaha to meet me and stay overnight with me. 

Well, this is what happened. 

I get to the airport at 9:30.  The Midwest Airlines check-in counter is moving very slowly.  Eventually one clerk jumps out from behind the counter and tells everyone in line that the flight we're all trying to get on - Flight 4 to Milwaukee - is cancelled due to mechanical failure.  They manage to rebook me on a flight leaving at 2 pm instead, leaving me with a 30 minute layover in Milwaukee and a flight that left at 4 for Omaha.  I figure it's still possible to make our best-case scenario, since my mother reports that the storm is coming in later than originally forecasted.  So I settle in and listen to the passengers trying to get to Kansas City worry about their delayed flight - there was a fog hazard in Kansas City.  They board and pretty soon it's 1:00, and there's no sign of the plane that's supposed to take me to Milwaukee.  Ordinarily it's not a huge deal if there's a delay on Flight #1, because chances are there will be a delay for Flight #2, or they'll hold the flight for you.  So I go to the counter to check, and yes, the Milwaukee flight is delayed until 3:00, and no, I won't make the connection.  It would be holding the flight for half an hour, which is too long when you're trying to beat an incoming weather system, and the plane was in all likelihood already sitting at the gate at Milwaukee - no chance of a delay. 

"And the later flight to Omaha is fully booked," says the Midwest agent.  "So you'd probably be there overnight.  But the problem with the snow is that no guarantee they're going to be getting flights out of there tomorrow."

Well, fuck.  He starts looking for other ways to get to Omaha.  "We can get you to Milwaukee," he says, "but the problem is then you're stuck."  United is booked up, Northwest is booked up.  He looks at other airports.  Denver's full.  "Man, what is with everybody trying to get to Omaha."  

He starts making calls.  This guy really put in effort.  He calls the Washington D.C. people - their flight to Omaha is full too, and they started "crying" to him when he asked if they could put in one more passenger; he calls Milwaukee, and they tell him what he suspected all along - "Don't send [the passenger] here."  Milwaukee already knows, I suspect, that it's going to be fucked - hell, it's already having delays.  So he calls D.C. again and they consent to an overbooking plus 1 - me being the 1.  My only other alternative is to fly to Kansas City, but fuck that - my mother isn't driving two and a half hours to Kansas City to pick me up.  They put me on the D.C. flight, although whether or not I have a seat is up in the air, so to speak. 

"Wait, so do I for sure have a seat?"

The guy makes weird faces at me.  "When you get there, check in - don't even say, do I have a seat, just check in to make sure the flight is still operating."  Why?  Oh yes, because it's leaving D.C. at 8 p.m. and is supposed to get to Omaha at 10 p.m. - right in the middle of the storm.  There's a chance the weather people in Miami might not let us take off that late - and then I'd be stuck in D.C. overnight, and all the Omaha flights the next day are full too.  

"But you know, we don't want you to be stuck here either," he said.  "Because it's already looking bad for us.  You might not get out till Monday if you stay in LaGuardia." 

"You're not making me feel better," I tell the agent. 

"When you leave here, you will have a seat," he promises me.  "Don't worry, I feel that this will work out."  They print me a boarding pass for D.C.-Omaha and tell me to run and catch the U.S. Airways shuttle to from New York to D.C.  Beside me, a guy trying to get to Green Bay has been told to take a bus from Milwaukee, because he's also going to miss his connection and the late-night flight to Green Bay is cancelled, and a guy trying to get to Atlanta is going to take his chances with Plan A, hoping to make his connection in Milwaukee.  I leave my bag with Midwest Airlines, hoping it'll get on that late flight to Milwaukee even if there's no space on the flight for me. 

***

Getting to U.S. Airways in LaGuardia is harder than it looks.  Walking to another terminal is easier at, say, LAX, because you can see the other terminal from wherever you are.  At LaGuardia, it just looks like you're walking out onto the New York highway.  The bus that's supposed to come to take passengers to other terminals is hella late - no surprise, because at LaGuardia traffic crawls.  Eventually - with much hysterics directed at my mother, who I had to call to let her know that I wouldn't be there until 10, if at all - the bus arrives and I get to the U.S. Airways terminal.  

Where the check-in agent rips up my Omaha boarding pass.  By mistake.  I notice it's not in my hand when he sends me off to the security check line.  "Wait, where's my boarding pass for my next flight?"

"I gave it to you."  He gave me a ticket for the flight to D.C.

"No, the one you just ripped up!" 

"Oh, shit."  He disappears beneath his counter and sorts through the trash can.  He gives it to me in three pieces.  "There, that's all you need.  Just give it to the Midwest people and they'll print out a new one for you."  Mind you, I had been given the boarding pass ahead of time so that I wouldn't need to print out a new one at the Midwest counter in D.C., in case the flight was overbooked - so as not to call into question whether or not I had a seat.  

But I go through security and get on the 3:00 D.C. shuttle, as it's cutely named, with all the hoighty-toighty businessmen and their Wall Street Journals, and basically spend the 35 minute flight praying that I get a seat on the flight to Omaha and that that flight takes off at all.  As we line up to leave the plane after touching down at D.C., the lady beside me tells me that she's been in the air all day, re-routed from airport to airport as flights get cancelled here and there. 

"I'm like a bird," she says. 

"Where are you trying to get to?"

"Charleston, South Carolina.  And you're trying to get to?"

"Omaha, Nebraska." 

She gives me a sympathetic look.  "Well, have a good holiday." 

***

At first the D.C. airport looks nice.  Down at the U.S. Airways end, it's pretty and decorated and bustling, and looks a lot like Minneapolis.  But I have to get to the far other end of the airport, where the smaller domestic airlines - Midwest, Northwestern, AirTran, and the ever-edgy Frontier - congregate in a circular terminal.  It's about a twenty-minute walk, especially given they don't maintain that part of the airport and the moving walkway's broken.  It feels like walking through the back rooms of a museum - no windows, weird old exhibits, random locked rooms.  It's 4, so I'm in no danger of missing the flight to D.C., but I'm completely rattled with the thought of the new boarding pass, the seat, and the weather forcing a cancellation. 

Finally I get to Terminal A and go to the check-in counter.  Late in the day people are getting frantic.  A college-aged couple is trying to beg people to let them jump ahead in line, because their flight is leaving in half an hour.  Nobody gives them the time of day.  It turns out they're trying to fly stand-by to Milwaukee, but the 5 pm flight to Milwaukee's been delayed by three hours to 8.  Meanwhile I get my boarding pass, thankfully, so I'm feeling pretty certain that I'll have a seat on the plane.  Now I just have to wait and make sure it takes off.

The terminal is crowded with people who are waiting for the Milwaukee and Kansas City flights.  Both are hideously late because of weather delays at both airports.  I'm worried that the plane that will take us to Omaha is coming in from either Milwaukee or Kansas City, but no - it's coming straight from Omaha, and it's right on schedule. 

"It's not a problem because of the weather?" I ask.

"No, it's goin'.  It's goin'," says the ticket agent.

Midwest only has three ticket agents handling two delayed flights to Milwaukee, one delayed flight to Kansas City, and the flight to Omaha.  Unsurprisingly, Omaha gets the short end of the stick, and the ticket agent doesn't even notice the plane from Omaha sidling up to the gate until it's almost stopped.  We end up taking off about forty-five minutes after we're supposed to because of the personnel shortage and the plane's delay in getting to D.C., but it's no big deal.  The plane, thank the Lord, is leaving for Omaha.  I call my mother to let her know.  She says the weather is crappy in Omaha, but if they think they can fly the plane in, then they can fly the plane in. 

I'm supposed to be sitting in Row 14, but me and the guy sitting next to me ended up switching seats with a mother and child sitting in Row 1 so they can be closer to the rest of their family in Row 14.  If you sit in Row 1, of course, there's no space for your laptop, so ours get stowed in a secret compartment by the head flight attendant, Janelle.  Thank God for the guy sitting next to me.  He was an Air Force scientific analyst and had the exact right kind of personality that keeps me calm when I'm in crisis - well, let's just say that there's a certain type of guy I get along really well with (like AC and my supervisor in Surabaya), and he was of that type.  We ended up talking about the government bureaucracy, schoolwork, politics, and eventually, Christmas presents and gliders and Arkansas and our aging pets and what presents they ought to get from SkyMall.  As the night wore on, it became vital to talk about something.  Anything.

***

Everything is fine at first.  We're given drinks and the Midwest trademark chocolate chip cookies.  And at around 10 Central time, we start to descend.  I'm pleasantly surprised.  The captain had said that we were facing strong headwinds and no shortcuts were possible.  Then his garbled voice comes on the intercom and mumbled something about restrooms and depressurization and altitude and apologizing for the inconvenience.  I look at Air Force guy.  "I think he said something about his oxygen mask not working.  And that's very serious.  I think that's what he meant about going down to 10,000 feet."

"So we're not landing in Omaha?"

"Uh, that's my impression."

"So where are we landing?"

"Indianapolis, I think?"

I look at Janelle, who's strapped in for landing.  "Does that mean we're not going to Omaha?"

She shrugs.  "That's a decision they're going to have to make."  She rattles on about how she wouldn't mind getting stuck in Indianapolis, because she lives here.  "But who knows, maybe it'll be just something quick they can fix."  

We lower the landing gear early to slow us down and burn fuel for eight minutes to make us lighter, so we'd actually be able to land in Indianapolis.  By the time we land I've all but given up on flying into Omaha that night, although the quiet Indianapolis airport, filled only with Fed Ex planes, doesn't look like the kind of place we could be put up for a night while maintenance was done on the plane.  The captain comes out after we're settled on the tarmac beside the repair hangar and says, "I'm not holding you hostage.  We're going to get this fixed and get you to Omaha as fast as possible."  This is, of course, promising.  "Now you've got a Christmas story," he says, obviously trying to make himself feel better.  But as he says, "When it's your safety in question, it's not even a decision.  The decision has already been made," and without a functional oxygen mask, if we got into air pressure trouble, the captain would be unconscious and he's clearly needed to fly the plane.

But of course we have to wait for the maintenance crew to wake up and use duct-tape (not kidding) to replace the oxygen mask, for the repair paperwork to get faxed in and signed, and for the de-icing machine to come and de-ice us.  It's freezing rain in Indianapolis, and we all know what happens to planes that don't de-ice before taking off (they get too heavy and crash).  The comedy of errors continues, however, because the de-icing truck is "out of diesel".  Me and Air Force guy can hear the airport tell the captain this because we're in Row 1 - it wasn't announced.  I stop listening.  "Do I want to know?" I ask Air Force guy.  "Probably not," he says, trying to stifle laughter.  By the time we take off, fishtailing across the frosty tarmac, it's about 12:30 a.m. 

But the plane calms down then, because we're on our way to Omaha.  Janelle turns off the cabin lights and everyone tries to go to sleep.  Unfortunately, the turbulence is awful and progress is slow, because we're flying into the storm.  There's no drinks this time - the captain keeps calling the flight attendants to tell them to stay strapped to their seats.  Thank goodness for my Dramamine.  The captain tries to get to an altitude that's comfortable, but then it's time to descend, and we descend into an effectively white haze.  It's very rocky and the snow has blanketed the tarmac.  We all hold our breath as the plane touches down at 2 a.m. Central time, but the captain impressively slows down as the plane approaches earth and then just glides it down the runway - one of the softest landings ever, snow or not.  He even manages to steer it into our designated gate, barreling through unplowed snow to do so.  It was surprising, to be honest, that Omaha accepted any planes, but ours was the last one in, and it's possible they wanted to push it because they knew conditions would only get worse.

Weather didn't actually get worse for Nebraska, but I guess it did get worse for places more in the "Midwest" - Milwaukee wasn't taking traffic in or out the next morning, meaning I would have been stuck there overnight (my bag got to Omaha about 45 minutes before I did, on that flight from Milwaukee that was too full to take me), and 600 flights were cancelled between New York's three airports.  Indiana apparently got hammered along with Illinois. 

And I eventually became convinced that college life was trying to give me "the hard goodbye".  This was my last attempt at flying home from Barnard for winter break, and the past three times had all been silk, so to speak.  I told Air Force guy I thought it was karma.  At one point (I think when the de-icing truck ran out of fuel), he said, "You must have been really bad this year." 

That's how I managed to land in Omaha eleven hours after I was supposed to.  I give a lot of credit to Midwest Airlines' handling of everything that happened.  They even drew a smiley face on a RUSH tag on my bag.  Whenever storms are involved, there's a chance of a lot of things going really bad in air travel - and as much as we complain about cancellations and delays, the humility of pilots and air traffic controllers is something to be thankful for.  We had a really good captain who obviously had a lot of experience flying with snow and storms (as any Midwest pilot should be!) and wanted to make sure we were as safe as possible while still getting us to Omaha. 

For more, see: Racing the Storm, an Air Crash Investigation episode.  

Airlines to Begin Charging for a Second Bag

Asshats.  And don't tell me to just "pack less" and "travel lighter", because I have to pack 4 months (and at least two seasons) worth of clothes, books, shoes, and a sleeping bag (because it takes the linens a while to be delivered to the dorm room at the beginning of the semester) into two bags that are not humungous.  It's not like I pack two suitcases to go on a business trip or a vacation (because I am a POOR college student, unlike the people saying that they can just "pack less" and "travel lighter", who are ironically also the ones who can swallow any cost the airlines throw at them), but to set up a freakin' life. 

I'm 5'3" and if I can haul two suitcases onto your plane then you shouldn't charge me for it. 

Wreckage of the 1977 crash between the KLM Rijn (Rhine River) and the Pan-Am Clipper Victor at Los Rodeos airport on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands.  Essentially, a colonial backwater, administered by the Spanish military, a touch-off point for cruises, for first and second honeymoons.  I never knew about this crash, the worst in aviation history, until watching "Crash of the Century" this past weekend.  Both planes were Boeing 747s, and 583 people died.  I will be going on a Boeing 747 on Saturday.  But at least it won't involve the Atlantic Ocean. 

I'm oh so nervous, oh so antsy.  I hate late nights like this.  During the day you can walk it off.  It's hot and humid and I'll be arriving home in a winter between twenty and forty degrees, according to my mother, who is stressed with work and has to prepare various Thanksgiving dishes before I get home.  On Thursday it'll be my third Thanksgiving away from home and my second away from my mother, but I won't be alone this year, eating Chinese take-out and watching Friday the 13th in my suitemate's room.  This year I'll be packing, watching Law & Order.  Thank God it doesn't mean as much to me as Christmas.  I listened for the first time to the lyrics of "Winter" by Tori Amos: "I put my hand in my father's glove... I know dad the ice is getting thin".  It's her father telling her, "when you gonna make up your mind, when you gonna love you as much as I do... 'cause things are gonna change so fast".  But this line, it's ambiguous: "You say I wanted you to be proud of me" - is it "You say, 'I wanted you to be proud of me'" or is it "You say I wanted you to be proud of me"?  I think it runs both ways.  In four months I'll have spent more time without my father than with him.  He liked swimming at beaches at sunset, when I stayed on shore with my mother, so he didn't have to watch me and protect me from riptides or big waves.  I keep a picture of him when I cross international waters, next to my passport.  "I tell you that I'll always want you near, you say that things change, my dear."

The Partners of Veterans Association of Australia was briefly featured on tonight's Crime Investigation: Australia ("Who Killed Harold Holt?").  Harold Holt was a prime minister of the '60s who signed Australia's soul over to America and went "all the way with LBJ".  The PVA was only established last year, but I think it's astounding that it was established at all.  What it alleges is stuff we all know but don't want to admit - as one of their members said, "war damages men".  Suicide was mentioned; children with disabilities.  My impression from the program was that they want the government to acknowledge what it did to their husbands by sending them to Vietnam.  I think that once I'm old and established, I'm going to write a book - non-fiction - on men and war, because it's had such an effect on my psyche.  It will open with the lines from Nirvana's "In Bloom": "he's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he don't know what it means, don't know what it means".  Harold Holt, incidentally, disappeared in the middle of his term while swimming at Cheviot Beach, near Melbourne.  Considering the amount of people that have gone missing there and never been recovered - including 35 victims of an 1897 shipwreck of the SS Cheviot - it's not surprising his body was never found, but apparently some people think he might have been picked up by a Chinese submarine or committed suicide.  It seems much more likely that he got tied up in kelp gardens and eaten by sharks.  He is commemorated in the rich Melbourne suburb of Malvern by a swimming pool. 

There was a plane crash over the weekend near Wilsons Promontory, the southern tip of Australia.  Four millionaires in a private plane - the middle of the ocean.  A wheel washed up on the beach today.  One body is still missing.  I remember hearing the family friend a couple days ago telling the media, "our hope now is that they're sitting out there somewhere, waiting for help".  A lot of people have gone missing in this country.  At the Great Barrier Reef, from an Adelaide beach. 

sources:  Tenerife disaster, Harold Holt, List of people who have disappeared, Four lost in plane crash near Wilsons Promontory, Michelle Kwan - "Winter" by Tori Amos