Airports

Traveling tends to be really stressful for some people. Personally, I'm a a pretty easy traveler. Give me an overnight bag, a cell phone and a laptop and I'm as happy as a pig in shit. So to make things go smoothly I actually got my wife and children to the airport Sunday afternoon two and a half hours ahead of departure time. Since we were scheduled for an International flight they need a little more time and since you can't check in online off to the airport ticket counter we go. American is now using self check-in at the airport. I put in the reservation code and I get a message in big block letters, "SEE TICKETING FOR CHECK-IN". I'm thinking WTF. I get here early, I am following instructions, which is unusual for me, and now my wife is starting to climb the walls because I have obviously screwed up the self check in kiosk. Well, it takes ticketing 10 minutes to check us in and they have no idea what went wrong. They did offer that maybe one of the names on the passports was not spelled exactly the same as in the reservation. More bullshit. Doesn't really matter cause we are checked in and now on the way to security. BTW, ticketing checked our bags all the way through to Prague. This is cool, I think.

Security was easy. No surprises. Jordan, my 17 year-old son, wasn't even carrying a weapon in his luggage this time. Yes, my son actually tried to carry my 22 year-old dive knife onto a plane when we went to Jamaica. Security took it while Jordan announced, "But it's not a weapon, it's a dive knife. It's for cutting fishing line when your scuba diving, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Explaining to Jordan that a nine inch dive knife is still a weapon no matter your intended use was pointless. Any how my favorite knife is gone for good but Jordan still got to go diving. Returning back to Sunday, no weapons, no liquids or gels in bottles over 3.5 ounces, no problems at all. This is cool.

So we get to the gate and the American Airlines announces that there will be a three hour departure delay, maybe. I am thinking, mechanical problem, maybe an ill pilot, gate crowding at Heathrow in London, all wrong. There is a volcano fowling the air space approaching Heathrow and the airport is closed until 7 AM London time tomorrow and Air Traffic Control doesn't know if they are going to allow American Flight 174 to lift off. The airport might be closed. Delayed flights suck. Delayed flights that might be canceled suck more.

Then the crowd complaints start. One in particular comes from this grumpy old bastard in his sixties. He actually said out loud, "What kind of an airline schedules a flight when there is an active volcano around." Maybe I'm a little slow, but I think that since this is a daily flight and has been so for well over two years I think the airline should be upset with the volcano since the airline was there first. Technically the volcano was there first but it has been quiet for a really long time and it didn't actually ask permission to belch smoke and ash. As far as volcanoes go this one is pretty rude. So here is this guy bitching up a storm about this volcano, the ATC and American and how they are all incompetent and he finally announces that he's going to Washington DC where they have properly run airports.

American then announces that we are going to board the plane at 8 PM. We won't have clearance to fly but if we get it we will already be on the plane and ready to fly if ATC gives the go ahead. This is a good plan one might think. So we get on the plane. Seated right behind me is grumpy old asshole guy. Turns out he has a PhD in physics which means he has one less personality trait than an engineer. Engineers have two. Normal people have seven personality traits. While I'm writing this my daughter is reading over my shoulder and asks,"So which personality trait does he have?" I say,"Dickhead, 100% dickhead." So Dr. Dickhead gets into an argument with my son Jordan about whether or not Jordan has any real knowledge of math. Jordan just finished BC Calculus as a Junior in high school. This is the same math that most 2nd semester Engineering Majors take in college. I am pretty impressed with the kid but Dr. Dickhead continues to tell him how little math he really knows. This eight and a half hour flight just got longer. Then we took off.