Time to spare? Go by air! (More time yet? Go by jet!)

I suppose my problems started when I got on the wrong hotel van at Sea-Tac Airport. Wouldn’t you know it that there are 2 Doubletree hotels near the airport, and for some reason I managed to get on the one that wasn’t going to my hotel. Luckily I realized it while we were still at the airport, and even better, as the van I needed to take was pulling up. Everyone on both vans got a good laugh out of it, including me. If you can laugh at yourself, then everyone else will be laughing with you and not at you.

As it was, I got to the hotel just shy of 2330. The nice thing about field layovers (layovers where you stay close to the airfield) is that you don’t spend half an hour getting to them. Thanks to a long day at work plus the addition of jet lag (2330 Seattle = 0230 Eastern) I was completely worn out and ready to just crash in my room for the night, so when the crew of Southwest asked if I wanted to meet them in the bar for drinks in 15 minutes, I jumped on it. It’s very rare for me to turn down alcohol filled moments with complete strangers. I think I took all of 15 minutes to get changed and get settled in at the bar with a whiskey sour in hand. When I finally made my way back to my room, the USA Today’s had already been laid out for the morning. Secretly, I was hoping that since I had stayed up later that perhaps I would be able to sleep later in the day. Alas…

I woke up at 0900. My alarm wasn’t set to go off until 1300. And for some reason, housekeeping has yet to learn that the sign on my door that says do not disturb means go away and leave me alone. They always interpret it as bang loudly on the door several times while shouting housekeeping, before attempting to barge in, slamming the door open into the chain lock, and then whispering, ‘oh so sorry, I come back later.’ And then they close the door just as loudly as when they opened it. In the spirit of slackerdom, I did lay in bed with my eyes closed hoping I would fall back asleep until my alarm went off.

At 1530, I was making my way to the gate where I would pick up my deadhead to SFO. On United Express. Since I haven’t mentioned it yet, I am 6’ tall. I have a hard time bending in the way that is required for movement of people onboard a regional jet, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this. Nor was I thrilled with the fact that when I arrived in SFO, I was to sit around for 3:48 so that I could work a red eye back to the east coast. Not exactly my idea of a thrilled time at work, especially on limited sleep and an earlier morning than I would have liked.

Luckily for me, when I got to SFO, I ran into a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in awhile so we caught up over a giant plate of French Toast (the fact that there is a place to get French Toast at 1900 in an airport amuses me). By the time my friend had to leave to make her flight, my other friend that I was working the red eye home with was at the airport, so we were able to kill more time around the airport until it was time for us to board our flight. She regaled me with the horror stories of the stew that was to be our lead for the night. According to my friend, she would have been a great candidate for the Real Housewives of ATL. As far as I could tell she was a one woman show, and that’s how she liked it. Always makes for a long evening when you have a super stew, and that long evening was about to get a little longer.

Murphy’s Law dictates that if it can go wrong it will. There’s an added clause that goes on to state that if you’re gone on a 4 day trip or if you are running at a maximum duty day, your last flight home will delay. Heaven forbid we should deny Murphy his law. Not only was our plane late getting to the gate, it turns out that our pilots had refused the aircraft. Put into normal terms, this means something was inop (broken) on the plane and they refused to fly it. Normally this ends up in a cancelled flight. In this case, they switched airplanes. The good news is that a 767 and 757 are like aircraft. This means that a pilot that is qualified to fly a 767 is also qualified to fly a 757. In other words, we had a new plane and we didn’t need to find new pilots. The bad news is that a 757 has a lower seating capacity than a 767 and several people were about to be denied boarding, making for a very lovely night.

We finally left sometime after midnight, well over 5 hours after I had originally landed at SFO. We made it into IAD 2 hours late, and I made it to my car (barely) where I spent the next hour or so asleep. After all, no one wants an airline zombie trying to drive home at 8 in the morning! I really can’t remember if anything exciting or nonexciting happened during the flight because that’s just how zoned out I was. But that’s what happens when you are up 20 hours straight!

I suppose there is a moral to this story. It probably involves not drinking at 2 am with other airline crews, but I don’t see that as something I ever plan on abstaining from. In the meanwhile, time to spare go by air. More time yet? Thank god for the place in the airport that sells French toast.

Next time on dragonball z? I fly to Detroit for a funfilled day of baseball. Thank god for benefits!

<3 SkyGirl