Never fly with a head cold
So I visited my girlfriend in Canada this weekend. The flight from Tampa to Edmonton, AB went fairly well (except for inept security and my second connection leaving 25 minutes late). It was coming home that sucked, and not just because I was leaving her up there.
After a 45 minute delay, my first of two flights finally took off. There was no one next to me, which turned out to be a good thing. Everything was fine until we started gaining altitude. My ears didn't hurt, but my stomach did not like the G-forces being thrust upon it. Finally, the plane did a hard right bank, but I knew that if I waited it out, things would be cool once we were heading in a straight line again. Trouble is, the plane wasn't turning at all--my equilibrium was. I looked up and the whole cabin was spinning. Looking down and shutting my eyes was only a temporary fix. Within five minutes I was employing the air sickness bag about every 60 seconds.
That lasted about 15 minutes, so I just slumped over with my new bag lunch firm in my grip until a flight attendant came by with the drink cart. I traded her my 4 hour-old pancakes and sausage for a ginger ale (not a bad deal!) and hoped to sleep off the trip. That would have been no problem had it not been for the screaming baby 2 seats up and the two business men across the aisle yammering about whatever it is they do for a living.
I originally had a one hour layover in Denver, but remember, the plane took off 45 minutes late. So between snatches of sleep I pondered if there would be enough time for them to get my luggage to the connecting flight. I was not optimistic. A little while before landing, the pilot announced from which gates the connecting flights would be departing. We would land at gate 15, and my connection would take off from gate 16. Perfect - something finally went right.
Then the plane pulled up to the gate and I saw that I misunderstood the pilot; through an airline speaker system, "arriving at gate 15." and "arriving at gate 50" sound an awful lot alike. That's right, I was 34 gates away from where I needed to be. So with minutes to spare and a swelling head cold I ran through the terminal. Ran and walked, actually; I couldn't run that long all at once, not in my condition, anyway. I don't know how many hundreds of yards it was to gate 16, but I made it. For some reason the sign said that this flight was departing to Orlando, not Tampa. I asked a couple of people if they were going to Tampa. "No, they moved that one to Gate 24." I double-checked with the guy behind the counter. He said yes, they did move it. "To gate 24?" He just shrugged his shoulders, frowned, and shook his head in an appathetic "how should I know?" fashion.
So again, I ran, hope against hope I ran, then walked, then heard "Last call for boarding at Gate 24." I was just about to give up when I saw Gate 24 about 50 feet ahead. So i ran a little more and actually made it. I got on and sat down literally about 5 minutes before it took off. Again, I felt a little ill when we were ascending, but once we leveled off I felt well enough to put on the headphones and watch the in-flight movie (Cars). Then about an hour into the flight my ears started hurting a little and plugging up a lot. And I started to feel queasy. I took off the headphones and tried to sleep again, but couldn't. I started to feel sicker so I took out the airsick bag (just in case) and started fanning myself with the emergency card from the seatback. After a couple of minutes two flight attendants came over and brought me ginger ale and an ice pack. They also checked back about every ten minutes to make sure I was OK. I found out later that the woman next to me got up and told the flight attendants that "there's a guy in really bad shape up there." By now the plane was descending, so the cabin pressure started changing. That not only sent piercing pain through my ears, but plugged them up to within about 10 % of my hearing. Everyone's voices were just tinny rattles, like it was long-distance through a very cheap phone.
When I finally got off the plane I went into the lobby and laid down on a seat for about ten minutes, then went to baggage claim to face the inevitable. As I expected, my suitcase was in Chicago (that's what they told everyone ahead of me too). So I filled out the claim forms and went home.
Nearly 24 hours later, I still only have about 60% of my hearing back. At least they delivered my luggage to my house.