I Hate Flying – A Summary of Our Day:
This morning in Greece, there was an hour-long traffic jam of a ten-minute stretch of highway on the way to the Athens airport. This made us miss all our flights. My sister in law says it was the worst traffic she had ever seen on that particular stretch of road in her entire life.
It took over an hour at the Athens airport to get the Delta people to find us a new flight home. Six hundred dollars later, we thought everything was going to be okay.
The Athens airport staff goofed and sent our baby stroller along with the regular baggage claim stuff so we haven’t had it to carry either Henry or his stuff all day. This would have helped with three flights between four airports.
The Athens Delta staff also didn’t check my wife and I into our correct seats, so we didn’t have seats next to each other – which is crucial with a baby. The Charles De Gaulle (CDG) airport staff had to waste another 20 minutes fixing our tickets.
Also, at the connection in Paris, my wife forgot her passport in the seat pocket of our previous plane from Athens. I had to sprint all the way back to the previous terminal at CDG, cut through a long line, convince CDG staff to search our old plane for her passport, and then sprint back to our new terminal.
Now, as soon as we landed in Atlanta, a nationwide Homeland Security computer outage shut down the US customs check-in, so we’re going to miss our very last flight, which is frustratingly just around the corner from where we are standing now.
And it’s now the shift-change for US customs here in Atlanta, so even though they have hundreds of people in line, they’re going to condense all the lanes down to just a few for the small night shift staff.
It smells like eight kinds body odor in here.
Somebody please “disrupt” this industry, preferably before our day is over.
Nota Bene – If you are one of the many people expecting to meet with me in person or over Skype tomorrow, my apologies for probably missing our appointment.