Off to Milwaukee

Yep, my travel karma is back. I need to have Claire chuck it out the window again so that I can start over with naked travel karma.

I poorly timed calling for a car to the airport. Instead of taking the 10 minutes I was expecting, it took 30 minutes for the driver to arrive. Coupled with his distractedly driving and his slow speeds, I arrived at the airport 20 minutes before boarding began. TSA was surprisingly efficient with the opt-out "assist," the woman was available to walk me to the back before my luggage had made it through the x-ray machine. One of these days, I'm going to put a bunch of embarrassing things in my suitcase, just the embarrassing things, overfilled, just to watch the x-ray watcher's reactions.

The pat-down was a pat-down, nothing special, no particular gropings or assaults. I was through as the flight started boarding and by the time I managed to walk to the far gate, the B group was already on the plane. So much for early-bird check-in. I stuck my bag in the first available overhead bin, and set my ass down in the first middle seat that has two skinny people at the window and aisle. One particular woman glared at me as I walked down the aisle, and had a bunch of stuff piled in the middle seat, so when the flight attendant told a following passenger to sit in the seat next to her, I have to admit to experiencing a bit of epicaricacy. Not that she was particularly harmed or misfortuned per se.

The flight left on time, arrived early. Yay for that, short flight in the middle seat. Getting off the plane was an ordeal, one that I think is common and that I will never understand. If you are going to take a long time to get off the plane, and you are at the front of the plane, why don't you wait until people have exited the plane before you get up to leave? If your luggage is going to take you 60 seconds to get down from the overhead bin, and there are 120 people behind you, you have just caused 2 hours of wasted time. Had you bothered to wait for 60 of those people to go by, and a break in the crowd happens, you can jump up and get your bag at that point. WHY WOULD YOU NOT WAIT? I totally wait. I get out of the way of the people behind me, and as the opportunities arise, I move as low-impact on the flow as I can.

This is a situation that Kris tells me I think more holistically than most people do. So I'm inconvenienced for 30 seconds, so what if the overall efficiency is increased by 2 hours. How is that not a win? Most people don't think that way, they just say "ME ME ME ME ME," and yes, I am that way, too. Which may just be the reason why U.S. sucks sometimes, we have more of the "me me me" and less of the "we we we."

My connecting flight out of Vegas was delayed. What I found most interesting about the delay was the lack of any communication around it. The flight was delayed, no reason was given. The plane was at the gate, we just weren't getting on. They kept announcing "We're in an oversold situation. We need two people to volunteer to fly to Milwaukee tomorrow." As near as I can tell, no one was getting on the plane until two people volunteered.

Eventually we did board the plane. Despite being A56, my favorite seat was available, so I was happy for that. As was my bladder, with the four trips to lavatory that happened on that three hour flight. WHY I think drinking anything on a flight is a good idea, I will never know.

Upon arriving at the Milwaukee airport, I looked up my hotel reservation. While it was technically the second of October when I arrived, my reservation was actually for 3pm on the second, not 12:15 am on the second. Sigh. Totally my fault on that one.

A generous laugh at my mistake, an opportunity for "Oh, how fantastic!", a quick call, and a few minutes later, I was in a car on my way to the hotel, with an extra day on my reservation.

Of note, my Lyft driver, Geoffrey (cool guy, had a great conversation with him), commented that, "90% of women will get in the back seat, 90% of guys will get in the front."

I am never sitting in the back seat of a Lyft car again.