Uncle Patrick's Tragic Traveling Tale of Woe!

Part I

Recent events have convinced me that sometime in the last century, Denver's city fathers put their heads together and decided that a Native American burial ground would be an excellent site for an airport. As we all know from the movie Poltergeist, building something atop a Native American burial ground is asking for metaphysical trouble. It certainly explains the spiritual wedgie I received there.

The plan was simple enough. Linda and I planned to fly to Reno on Wednesday afternoon. The trip had two parts: the first took us from Austin to the thrice-cursed Denver airport; the second took us from spiritually bereft Denver airport to Reno. We would arrive at our hotel, exhausted but satisfied that our country's modern transportation system brought us safely to our destination. Alas, it was not to be.

It may come as a shock to my Austin-area readers that things are pretty damned cold in other parts of the country. While we plod our way through humid days of eighty degree heat, other people are freezing their butts off in snow and ice. I mention this fact because it played an important part in this story.

When we checked into the Austin airport, things could not have been easier. There were no lines at the ticket counter. The TSA people at the security checkpoint were efficient and friendly. Linda and I had a couple of great hamburgers, courtesy of Waterloo Ice House (I am convinced that Austin's airport is among the best in the world based solely upon the excellent selection of food one can find there). All was right with the world. We were early and did not feel rushed or stressed. We settled down comfortably at our gate - Linda in her kerchief and I in my cap, as it were - waiting for our plane.

I was so relaxed that I did not grow alarmed when we learned that our plane would be thirty minutes late. In retrospect, this should have been a source of consternation. I should have taken matters in hand. I did not. I was floating in some rarefied air, content and confident, never realizing that I would soon fall, Icarus-like, to earth.

The plane ride to Denver was not interesting. As we approached the moral black hole that is the Denver airport, Linda looked at me and said "We are going to miss the flight to Reno."

I shrugged and said, nonchalantly, "Let us see what happens. Worst case scenario: we get another flight."

I looked out the window and saw snow everywhere. I have not seen snow in over a year and I enjoyed the view. At the time, it did not occur to me that the snow was the reason we were late and that it would continue to plague me for the rest of the night. At that moment, I was thinking sleigh rides, hot chocolate, and chairs by the fire with a good book.

We left the plane and rushed to the woman assigned to help people like us. We asked her where we could find the gate for our next flight. I was hopeful that she would tell us that the flight to Reno was delayed too and that we would have plenty of time to climb aboard. Instead, she stared at us blankly, shrugged, and told us that our flight had already left. She jerked her head in the direction of the customer service desk and turned away, doubtless to stare blankly at another desperate passenger.

The customer service desk was not far. It was a tall counter and a maze of mesh line designed to control the mass of unwashed petitioners who flocked there and force them to fall into line and wait their turn. The counter had six computer terminals, but only three employees manned them. Two of them were with customers, a third was busily counting little slips of paper very slowly. Other employees came and went but they were not there to help us. They looked at us, they lingered to talk with other employees, but we were not within their job description.

There were not many of us, but in airline queues it is often quality, not quantity. We stood for nearly ten minutes, watching two employees squint at their computer screens and the third employee continue to count his little slips of paper. A couple of bubbly blond young people treated the employee who helped them as a sort of concierge, asking for all of their options, weighing each one carefully, talking to friends on their cell phones. An elderly man mumbled at the employee who helped him, trying to understand what the hell she was saying to him, trying to get her to understand what he was telling her. The third employee continued to count paper. We waited.

Finally, the third employee looked up from his counting, noticed that a line of people were waiting for help, and summoned us to him. We explained our situation, trying to impress him with a sense of urgency. The man stared back at us slowly (if you had told me a few days ago that a person could stare at another person slowly, I would not have believed it possible). I imagine that if I were trying to communicate to a mountain gorilla, I would experience the same kind of reception. Eventually, he gathered that we needed another flight to Reno and began the process of learning how to use his computer. After a good twenty minutes, he discovered that his airline had other flights to Reno and, much to his delight, other airlines flew there too. The experience so moved him that he left the counter, walked through a door behind him, and disappeared for a good ten minutes. I suppose he needed to share his good fortune with other employees, perhaps take a breather on a sofa, drink a beer. When he returned, he produced tickets that would first take us to Phoenix, then to Reno. The catch: we had to be back at the airport by 4:00 in the morning. It was already 10:30 at night.

I asked him about our luggage. He told us that we needed to pick it up tonight and recheck it in the morning. He gave us directions to the baggage carousel, provided us with a voucher that discounted our stay at a local hotel (the airline would not pay for the hotel because, as someone explained to us, they were not responsible for the weather), and sent us on our way.

His directions led us to a blank wall. I saw no baggage carousel. I asked another person who wandered by for new directions and, after a train ride and some head scratching, we found the carousel. We waited for a luggage but it did not emerge. We talked to the airline representative who loitered nearby and he told us to wait a while longer. After fifteen minutes, we were still sans luggage. We consulted another representative, who told us that luggage that belonged to people who missed their flights were often late. We waited some more. Nothing. We went to a third representative, who told us that our bag "must have been sent on to Reno." He told us that there had been time after our Austin plane touched down for the bags to make it onto the plane. He could not locate our bag in the computer system but he assured us that was what happened to it. I began to wonder if the woman we talked to when we disembarked had any idea concerning the status of our flight to Reno. I wondered if we could have caught the flight. In any event, our luggage had gone to Reno and we were still in the god-forsaken Denver airport.

Linda and I consulted. It was clear to us, with the information we had available, that we should proceed to Reno. We had to trust in karma (for we had surely accumulated some good karma in this ordeal) to deliver the bag to us when we got there. We were certain that the airline people we dealt with could no longer help us. The only decision left to make that night was what to do with the rest of our evening. By then, it was after 11:00.

Linda made some calls and found a hotel that had a shuttle willing to return us to the airport at 4:00 am. We took our meager belongings outside and waited in the freezing wind for the shuttle to take us away. As we waited, a van pulled up. Its driver, a swarthy little man, emerged and walked along the curb. He told anyone within earshot that he could take anyone to any hotel for ten dollars. We did not take him up on it, and he disappeared.

We waited in the bitter cold for another ten minutes before the shuttle arrived. I must say that Denver knows how to keep it's roads clean and free of ice and snow! It took us twenty minutes to get to the hotel but we didn't slide into a ditch or slam into another vehicle, as I had half expected.

We stumbled into the lobby of the hotel to find a melee in progress. The swarthy little man was screeching at the hotel clerk and another fellow who was trying to check in. We soon learned that the fellow came to the hotel on the swarthy little man's shuttle but had not paid him ten dollars. The fellow attempted to explain to us that he just arrived from Mexico and had no American currency and, besides, he did not know that he had to pay the swarthy little man anything. For his part, the swarthy little man was prepared to haul witnesses out of his shuttle (who were presumably waiting to be taken to their own hotels so they could get some sleep) to testify that he told everyone that they must pay for the privilege of riding in his van. The clerk kept quiet and soon a manager appeared. She did not seem prepared to deal with swarthy little men and fellows just in from Mexico. She insisted that the swarthy little man could not come into her hotel and threaten anyone. The swarthy little man insisted that he could and again promised many witnesses and much retribution. Eventually, the fellow just in from Mexico offered to pay the swarthy little man with a credit card. The swarthy little man danced out to his shuttle (where his witnesses awaited their cue to come forth) to retrieve the card reader. I gather that the manager was not aware that the parties reached an agreement, as she was on a cell phone trying to get someone to tell her what to do. When the swarthy little man left the lobby, she grabbed the fellow just in from Mexico by the elbow, apologize profusely for the inconvenience, and personally escort him to his room. By the time the swarthy little man came back with the card reader, his customer was gone. I should note that the fellow just in from Mexico did not stop the manager from leading him away so he could pay the swarthy little man.

Although the swarthy little man looked as if his head would explode like an overripe swarthy little grapefruit, he collected himself and promised to return in the morning with witnesses and retribution. He had other customers he needed to attend to. He focused his ire on the manager and muttered something about getting her fired.

Linda and I stood to the side and said nothing. We just wanted to get some sleep. It was well after midnight and we needed to get back to the airport early for more punishment. The clerk gave us a look and checked us in.

We finally crawled into bed around 12:30 am.

Little did we know that darker clouds were building on the horizon....