For a law worth repealing, I nominate Murphy's Law. Our "Coming to America" story this week.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Air travel is chaos recently. But we were always thinking, this must affect Kansas City to Portland, or Phoenix to Atlanta, or routes like that. Surely not the fully booked transatlantic routes that bring the airlines all their big revenue during the summer?
Hah! Forget it.
On Tuesday, my wife and I were starting our usual summer trip to Massachusetts for our escape to the outer tip of Cape Cod. This year, the route was Düsseldorf to Amsterdam to Boston. The connection was tight in Amsterdam, but the flight from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam only takes 30 minutes on a jet, and the schedule gives it an hour, so we had a margin of error. Before we left Germany, I noticed that Delta had advised us that the flight from Amsterdam to Boston was delayed by an hour, so we didn't even have to panic when transferring in Amsterdam. It is a modern, but horribly designed airport, where you have to walk huge distances to transfer from a Schengen flight to a non-Schengen flight.
We got to Amsterdam a hour late, but since the Delta flight was leaving an hour late as well, there shouldn't have been a problem. Right. STUUUUUPID. A US air line? There's ALWAYS a problem. The original departure time of 14:40 had been been pushed back to 15:40. Still OK. I even checked with the gate, who looked up our bag tags and confirmed that our bags from Düsseldorf were indeed about the plane to Boston. What was NOT there was the crew. at about 5 PM, the gate announced that there had been "crew issues." Whether that meant the pilot was drunk, or the co-pilot had tested positive for Covid19, who knows? The final effect was that our flight was canceled.
Our pre-paid room in Boston went up in smoke (or, rather, the money I paid for it). So did our dinner plans for Legal Seafood at the Aquarium. Delta didn't even help us with a hotel. They just said make it "reasonable (whatever THAT meant), and they would reimburse us. All we have to do is print out a form, send in the receipts, and we'll get the money back--IF they determine the prices were reasonable.
Delta then said the flight would now leave the next morning at 8:30 AM. Same plane, same gate, and we could use our boarding passes to get back on. BUT--because of the heavy passenger storm, we had to be at the airport 3 hours before flight time. That meant being there at 5:30 AM. Luckily, I have an office in the Netherlands, and they found me a hotel near Schipol airport that had a vacancy and did NOT cost €450 a night.
BUT---to get out of the airport, since we had already "left" Europe by going through passport control, we had to "re-enter" Europe and go though passport control again. Another half hour wait, although we were somewhat compensated when we spied an ice cream stand that had the absolutely best passion fruit sorbet in the world.
The hotel asked if I wanted to buy the breakfast buffet in advance, since it was cheaper. I said when do you start serving breakfast?`They said 6:30. I said we had to be at the airport at 5:30, so would they mind catering it to our airport departure gate at 7:30? Yes, they minded. We did not buy the hotel's breakfast buffet.
We got to the airport at 5:45. We figured what the hell, the boarding passes were still good, so that would save some time, right? Surely you jest. No, the boarding passes were NOT still good. We went to the KLM desk (Delta was nowhere to be found), and the woman there said no, we had to go the "Travel and Services" counter. We went there. There was a long line with two counters open, and a LOT of people who spoke neither English nor Dutch trying to argue their way to the documents they needed with only slips of paper to justify it. We gave up, and looked for a security entrance and hoped for an understanding agent.
Maybe there was an understanding agent somewhere, but the only entrances were electronic, and they only accepted valid boarding pases, which ours no longer were. So we looked for a ticketing agent. We ended up again at the counter where the woman had told us to go to "Travelers and Services." We went to another agent, who DID agree to help us. She DID manage to get my wife a new boarding pass for the new flight number. There is no such flight in Delta's schedule. They made it up specifically for this one flight. My boarding pass did NOT work. After 15 minutes of calling around, she finally found someone who could manipulate their computers to agree to give me a boarding pass. They re-scanned our bag tags, and said, try try again.
THIS time, we got past the electronic scanners, and got through security. We walked all the way to the gate again. It started filling up again, and although we had access to the KLM lounge, since I am Sky Team Platinum-for-life, it was just too far away to risk. So we sat and waited. They boarded the people with infants and the wheelchairs. Then they boarded active members of the military, since they are far more fragile than a 70 year old frazzled married couple (us), and apparently needed extra assistance.
We found our seats, and conked out. Delta apparently DID manage to find a crew (there HAD to be one lying around the house SOMEWHERE, after all), and at 8:45 or so, we actually did take off for Boston. Since at 10:00 in the morning, we were about three hours before the overseas flights usually start pouring in, we got through CBP in record time, and our luggage appeared in its entirety shortly after that. We had to wait for a taxi to get us into town. We had plenty of offers, but even eager taxi drivers can't magically make their vehicles accommodate twice as much luggage as they were built to handle. We asked the dispatcher for a bigger taxi, and eventually one arrived. We had reserved a rental car for Wednesday, but not until 1:30 PM. I figured we'd risk it going to the hotel we should have been at the day before, and hoped that the bell staff at the street level would remember me (I tip big because I know we always have a lot of stuff, and they always were nice about it). Sure enough, they did, and said they would store our stuff for 3 hours, and have a car waiting to take us back to the airport to the car rental place.
So, we went into Boston, dropped in on a friend for an hour, had coffee, walked back to the hotel, piled our stuff into the waiting car, and went to the airport car rental terminal. Not much of a wait, being Wednesday noonish. The rental agency said we could have a bigger sized car if we wanted to upgrade. More space for our stuff and our family, who will start trickling in starting this weekend. Sure, does it cost extra? Oh, let me see. Yes, it does cost a little extra. How much extra? $1775 extra. That's BEFORE the decimal point? Umm, right. No, thanks!
We dumped our stuff in the car, got out some water bottles we had bought for the three hour trip, and took off. Traffic out of Boston was awful, but it thinned out about halfway to the Sagamore Bridge, which separates the mainland from Cape Cod. We got to the real estate agency that rented us the house, and they led us to the place, which is somewhat secluded, but nicely laid out. This is a new place, one we haven't been in before, and we are still learning the ropes. We went food shopping, forgot maybe a quarter of the things we needed (we were pretty tired at this point). but made it back, and conked out to sleep immediately.
Oh yeah, and my 35 year old friend from DC who plays banjo is here, too. He likes to put on old clothes and set up a chair on the street in Provincetown to busk for spare change. Last year, I borrowed a guitar and joined him like a latter-day Flatt and Scruggs duo. We got a great reception, and had conversations with people from South Carolina to Spain. No one knew who either of us was, and it was a blast. His dad was one of the original Watergate prosecutors, but no one had any idea about that. They were just there for the music--as were we.
We have concerts booked at the local (Truro, MA) sound stage with Béla Fleck and Graham Nash. Other than that, family, food and ocean.
I bust my ass all year to able to take these few weeks here, and not even Delta's "crew issues" are going to take them from me. Our sentiment when we finally got here may have been "we are getting too old for this shit," but this morning, when we looked out at the sun and the green and the water, it dawned on us that, no, we are NOT too old for this shit.
Not yet, anyway.
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You do write a great story, for sure.
Thank goodness for the happy ending!
