I left my home in California early Monday morning, hitching a ride in the cousin Jenny caravan that was taking cousin April and her twin 5 yr old brats Matt & Kylie to the airport for their return home to Colorado. Said brats had infected me with a virus that they obliterated after nothing but a partial afternoon nap and light fatigue one day after the other. The third day, Sunday, was my turn for the domino of sick and I wasn’t so lucky to shake it after crap so easy as falling asleep on the couch watching Nightmare Before Christmas. So now it’s Monday and I’m warm with a light fever and up at 6AM to go to the airport and do my part in perpetuating Swine Flu scare.
I could have waited 4 or 5 hours and gained some badly needed sleep and hitch a ride to the airp with cousin Dena who was driving back to her home in San Diego later in the day. but I thought it was a better idea to try for the earlier flights since the passenger load was full and my ticket was only a Standby (meaning, I only get on if there’s an empty seat).
10 hours later, I’ve still not made it on a flight and I feel sick as a brick. I’m going to my parents house in Texas with my mom so at least she was there with me to keep track of the gates, flight numbers and to get me peppermint tea from Starbucks and crown shaped chicken nuggets from Burger King, which I thought were chickens feet at first — and wtf.Crowns? People make fun of the Mcnugget for being an unnatural industrial meat based food product and Burger King is stamping their processed bird carcasses into the shape of friggin halved starfish and they get a pass? Must be the King stifling dissent through creepy intimidation.
It’s 7PM, I’m sleep deprived and fevered up and must have a hot shower and sleep in an actual bed or I’m going to start stamping my feet n making a scene…
The next flight is at midnight and there ain no way I’m waiting another 5 hours TTP (tired torture pain) for another mere attempt. Shuttling all the way back home would be $80+ for the two of us, so we get a hotel near the airport for the night. I get my shower and bed, but forgot to mention “sleep” when I made my wish on the monkey paw, so naturally I’m awoken once by coughing, once by Los Angeles night noises, and kept awake for awhile time of three as my mom tries to figure out with my dad on the phone, how to list us for the morning flight since you can list yourself starting 4 hours ahead of your departure and receive priority, but my mom and dad both logged in at the same time trying to make the listing, thus canceling it out and shutting down the account… They had to request temporary passwords and then just one of them do it and we were finally set to go, after we had lost the priority the early listing was supposed to afford us…
4:30AM and the alarm goes off to get to the airport again…
I could have have waited 4 or 5 hours and gained some badly needed sleep and just tried for a later flight, but I thought my best bet was the early flight and I could keep the others as a backup.
It’s 10AM and I haven’t made it on any of the flights. There are cancellations due to weather and all kinds of shit effing things up to where they keep asking people to give up their tickets in return for taking a later flight and receiving a travel voucher on another flight of their choice, which means lower priority tickets like mine didn’t stand a chance. I never got above 44 (high of 78) on the standby list…
All day the day before I had been trying to sleep upright in those awful LAX chairs by slouching in the seat and using my feet to prop my body up from sliding. Its monstrously uncomfortable after more than a few minutes… Today I need for realz sleeps, so after not being afforded a seat on the first flight of the day, I moved over to an adjacent gate because its near the windows and I planned to leave my bags with my my mom at the the chairs 6 feet from the wall and window and I would sprawl out in the open flat area there and get some sleep in between flights. I waited exactly 5 minutes after moving to that spot before sprawling out to rest and within those damn 5 minutes, what happens? Pearl Harbor all over again…
this Asian mother fkker surprise attacked me & stole my resting spot but i got his picture on the internetz and he knows not the sleeping giant he’s awoken
- .
He frigging slept there for 4 hours… I know it was exactly 4 hours because that was how long I stayed at that spot at the gate. I only moved because the next flight to try for was further down the terminal – and wouldn’t ya know it? – Tokyo Rose over here gets up 16 and a fkking half seconds before I do to change gates……..
I finally tell my mom thanks for staying with me, but I’m becoming suicidal and we need to just abort this mission and let her go ahead and go to the next flight to Texas without me if I don’t get assigned a standby seat. I would try for one more and if I didn’t make it, I’d take a shuttle back home and fly out to Texas in a few days when I’m feeling better.
Apparently, all I had to do was call the gods’ bluff, cuz right after that I made the next attempt. It was to Denver. Denver has comfortable chairs and free WiFi. I watched Coraline and downloaded yesterdays podcasts to fill Brenda back up during the hour layover and got right on to Dallas.
I was in First Class going from Denver to Dallas, with comfy leather seats, plenty of leg room, a window seat and a thick soft blanket..but apparently the god’s called my bluff and I didn’t sleep a wink the whole flight…
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