"I'm like a hunter of Peace, one who chases the elusive mayfly of love... or something like that"
So, it's 2.30PM here, which means it's 7.30AM back home. Unsurprisingly, no one is online, so I thought it would be a good time to post to LJ. Yeah, I know, I never do that. But I am now. Keeps me awake.
Let me tell you the story of how I got to Israel and why it took me 42 hours between leaving my parents' house in Brookline to get to the hotel in Tel Aviv. It's a story full of tears, rage, some laughter and a pizza.
My original itinerary had me leaving Logan at 6.30PM on Friday to get to Philladelphia, and from there I would get a flight at 9.15PM to Israel, landing at 3.30 in the afternoon on Saturday. Before I left Brookline, that was the plan. It was a simple time back then. When I had faith in the system and didn't want to stab every employee of an airline. There were unicorns and rainbows everywhere.
Clearly, things had to go downhill from the very start. I got a cab from my parents' house in Brookline. I needed to stash my car somewhere for the week and that was the easiest option. My brother suggested a cab company and they called me at 3.30 when I asked them to be there. The guy on the phone said that the cab was outside. It was not. It was down the street. Apparently the guy saw a street number and assumed that the house was the next one. He was wrong. This wasn't a big deal and I was fine to walk a half a block to get to the cab, but it was a bad omen.
Then when the cab driver couldn't figure out his own fare system, I started to get a little worried. When we got to Logan and there were signs that rerouted Terminal B departures to arrivals, he was having trouble understanding them. I had to explain it to him. That was a little more troubling.
But I chocked it up to a weird cab driver. I checked into my flight (with my one carry-on bag and no checked luggage, this will be important later) and headed to the gate. All was looking good, while my flight was delayed for ten minutes, I would still get my connecting flight. So I got a sandwich and sat down.
Then I got an alert that the flight was delayed an extra half hour. I got a little worried about my connecting flight, so I talked to the guy at the counter and he said he could put me on a flight that was originally supposed to leave at 4.30 but was delayed and was supposed to leave at 6.35. I should have been concerned that it had already been delayed so much, but I wasn't thinking. I got there and got on the plane whereupon I sat there for almost half an hour only to hear an announcement from the captain that in about half an hour they would find out how long it would take to fix the maintenance issue. Not that it would be done in half an hour, but in half an hour, they would know how long it will take.
That's about when I got off the plane and was ushered back to the US Air ticketing counter. I was clearly going to miss my flight out of Philly, so I needed something new. At around 7.45, I was finally told that I could get to Israel a little later than I had planned, at around 4 in the morning. However, to do so I needed to run to the gate to catch an 8PM flight to La Guardia. I asked the woman where I was going to be going from there since she didn't print me out any other boarding passes, and she told me that the woman at the gate would let me know.
So I scurried through security to the gate whereupon getting close, I was told to run. Holding a heavy carry on of all my stuff, I really couldn't run. She informed me in a huffy tone that they were running four minutes late and that she didn't want to hold the plane any longer. For one, my running at that point would have saved approximately 32 seconds and anyways, I had just been on a plane that was delayed for about four hours and she was worried about four minutes. I was tired and upset, so I grumbled down the jetway, only to hear her close the door, exclaiming that she would never hold the plane for me again. You can imagine how dismayed I was to hear that.
Flight #1 - BOS to LGA. Duration ~1 hour with takeoff and landing (Aisle seat)
I talked to the flight attendant on that flight and he told me that while he didn't have my subsequent flight information, I could talk to the woman at the gate when we landed and she would help me out. So I did just that. The woman at the gate tried to be helpful, explained that I was booked on a flight leaving JFK at 11.15PM on that night (Friday). Apparently I would have to take a cab from La Guardia to JFK and I would have to go fast to catch the plane. She explained that the flight was an El Al flight from JFK to London and then after an almost 10 hour layover in Heathrow, I would be on a flight to Tel Aviv. Hooray. If that was my only option, that was what it was. (Did you catch the problem here? I didn't at the time. I'll explain later.)
After she tried to get me a better flight which just served to stress me out since I needed to rush to JFK, I got in a cab (which I was told would take 15 minutes) for an almost half hour drive to JFK. I ran into the terminal, to find that all the El Al counters were closed. I ran to security, clutching my little piece of paper itinerary thing. They asked for my boarding pass. I explained that I didn't have one. I told them I was on a flight at 11.15. They asked what airline. I told them El Al. And then it hit me. I was booked on an El Al flight on Friday night. El Al is a Jewish run airline. The would never (and have never) had flights on Shabbat. I had been booked on a non existent flight.
I felt a mixture of dejection, frustration and tiredness. I clearly needed to talk to someone at US Air and figure out what was going on. One of the guys at security took pity on me and walked with me to the airport shuttle train. He made me feel better by listening and talking to me. He told me to go to Terminal 8 and I would get it all sorted out. So I did.
US Air isn't at Terminal 8. It's at Terminal 7. It took me almost half an hour of lugging around my heavy bag to figure this out and then get back on the shuttle train. By this point I was overtired, I was in pain and I was frustrated. I wanted to walk up to the US Air agent and demand that they make this right. I finally found where the little ticket counter was and I stormed over to it... to find that it was closed and no one was there.
I fell into a nearby seat with weary tears filling my eyes. I was stuck. I knew I wasn't getting out of New York that night and I didn't know how I was getting to Israel. I finally called US Air's customer service line and started a long conversation with a woman who I was told was a supervisor and who could help me. I told her my story. I told her about the delays and the rude woman at the gate in Boston. And most importantly, I told her about being booked on a flight that didn't exist. She told me that she didn't know how that could happen and then told me that there wasn't much she could do to help me.
I then proceeded to spend about an hour (which felt like six) talking on the phone with this woman, trying to not only get a flight to Israel as soon as I could, but to get *any* but of compensation from her. I knew I had to get a hotel room for the night, but since the ticket counter was closed, they apparently couldn't give me a hotel voucher. She told me she couldn't do anything from where she was, she couldn't get me upgraded or anything. I was furious. She explained that she should be someone at the baggage claim office that could help me. So I went over there to find the door locked. She told me that the supervisor was "on the phone" and would call me back when he was done.
So I did the only thing I could do at that moment, sit on the ground and cry. It wasn't dignified and it wasn't pleasant, but it was the only thing I had the energy to do. I gathered my senses and called the travel agency that my company pointed me at to get the flight in the first place. I talked to a wonderfully understanding and calming woman who booked me a hotel room and told me how to get to the place where the shuttle would pick me up.
I was too tired to be upset at this point, so I trudged over to the shuttle pickup zone. My bag was not only kinda heavy, but the only strap was a plain nylon weave and it had begun to dig into the flesh on the insides of my hands. When I finally got to the hotel, the only guy behind the desk was arguing with domino's on behalf of a guest, explaining that he didn't get the pizza that he ordered. The guest didn't speak much English, the guy behind the desk didn't do much better. I just wanted to go to bed so I gave the guest money, bought the pizza from him and told him to just get a new one.
So I curled up in this Comfort Inn hotel room with my laptop and a pizza and I finally slept. It was nice.
My flight the next day was at noon. I had been booked on the same flight out of Philly as before, just on the next day. But since I was in JFK and not in Boston, I had to make *another* fight out of Charlotte NC to get there. Hooray. One silver lining? I managed, with help of my sob story, to get bumped to first class on my flight to Charlotte.
Flight #2 - JFK to CLT. Duration ~2 hours with takeoff and landing (First class).
Charlotte was pretty uninteresting and I was getting really tired of lugging my bag around everywhere. My hands, legs and shoulders were all hurting and I just wanted to go home. The woman at the counter at the gate was sympathetic to my story, but told me that she couldn't get me bumped. She did change my seat to an aisle rather than a center seat saying "an aisle is better every day of the week and twice on Sunday." That made me smile at least. She explained that there were no first class seats available, so there wasn't more she could do.
Flight #3 - CLT to PHL. Duration ~1.5 hours with takeoff and landing (Aisle).
Then, of course, as I'm sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off, I see that same woman quietly single out two people and take them up to first class. I was livid, but there wasn't anything I could do. So I sat there and read comics on my iPad until I stopped wanting to stab people. I ran out of comics before that happened.
I got to Philly and started the long walk to my gate. I was exhausted, in pain and upset. I went to the US Air customer service desk and ranted at the woman there. She told me that she too couldn't understand how someone could book me on a non existent flight. I told her it didn't matter how, but rather that it happened. I got her to agree to talk to the agents at the gate about upgrading me, though the plane was full, she said. She also told me that she would put a note in my records to try to get me a first class ticket home from Israel. I was exhausted and accepted it, knowing that the likelyhood of any of these things actually happening was small.
It was time for a drink. So I sat at one of the restaurants and had a drink and a sandwich. The booze helped. Especially since I had to go through a secondary security checkpoint at the gate to my flight to Israel. That and I was asking the ticket agent there about getting upgraded and he told me that there were no first class seats available. Meanwhile, the guy right next to me was talking to another agent who was explaining that he got the last first class seat. Apparently (according to the agent) he had bought that a while ago and was working out details. However, my agent told me that while first class was full, coach wasn't and I could have a whole two seat aisle to myself.
Flight #4 - PHL to TLV. Duration ~11 hours with takeoff and landing. (Window and aisle).
By the time I got to the hotel in my new rental car (which they gave me the wrong starter code for), I was exhausted and my back, neck, arms, hands and shoulders all hurt. I accidentally parked in the lot that cost money rather than the place that didn't and I ordered room service when I should have. But I was in a bed. In Israel, where I was supposed to be.
Then I went to work this morning. ugh.
Let me tell you the story of how I got to Israel and why it took me 42 hours between leaving my parents' house in Brookline to get to the hotel in Tel Aviv. It's a story full of tears, rage, some laughter and a pizza.
My original itinerary had me leaving Logan at 6.30PM on Friday to get to Philladelphia, and from there I would get a flight at 9.15PM to Israel, landing at 3.30 in the afternoon on Saturday. Before I left Brookline, that was the plan. It was a simple time back then. When I had faith in the system and didn't want to stab every employee of an airline. There were unicorns and rainbows everywhere.
Clearly, things had to go downhill from the very start. I got a cab from my parents' house in Brookline. I needed to stash my car somewhere for the week and that was the easiest option. My brother suggested a cab company and they called me at 3.30 when I asked them to be there. The guy on the phone said that the cab was outside. It was not. It was down the street. Apparently the guy saw a street number and assumed that the house was the next one. He was wrong. This wasn't a big deal and I was fine to walk a half a block to get to the cab, but it was a bad omen.
Then when the cab driver couldn't figure out his own fare system, I started to get a little worried. When we got to Logan and there were signs that rerouted Terminal B departures to arrivals, he was having trouble understanding them. I had to explain it to him. That was a little more troubling.
But I chocked it up to a weird cab driver. I checked into my flight (with my one carry-on bag and no checked luggage, this will be important later) and headed to the gate. All was looking good, while my flight was delayed for ten minutes, I would still get my connecting flight. So I got a sandwich and sat down.
Then I got an alert that the flight was delayed an extra half hour. I got a little worried about my connecting flight, so I talked to the guy at the counter and he said he could put me on a flight that was originally supposed to leave at 4.30 but was delayed and was supposed to leave at 6.35. I should have been concerned that it had already been delayed so much, but I wasn't thinking. I got there and got on the plane whereupon I sat there for almost half an hour only to hear an announcement from the captain that in about half an hour they would find out how long it would take to fix the maintenance issue. Not that it would be done in half an hour, but in half an hour, they would know how long it will take.
That's about when I got off the plane and was ushered back to the US Air ticketing counter. I was clearly going to miss my flight out of Philly, so I needed something new. At around 7.45, I was finally told that I could get to Israel a little later than I had planned, at around 4 in the morning. However, to do so I needed to run to the gate to catch an 8PM flight to La Guardia. I asked the woman where I was going to be going from there since she didn't print me out any other boarding passes, and she told me that the woman at the gate would let me know.
So I scurried through security to the gate whereupon getting close, I was told to run. Holding a heavy carry on of all my stuff, I really couldn't run. She informed me in a huffy tone that they were running four minutes late and that she didn't want to hold the plane any longer. For one, my running at that point would have saved approximately 32 seconds and anyways, I had just been on a plane that was delayed for about four hours and she was worried about four minutes. I was tired and upset, so I grumbled down the jetway, only to hear her close the door, exclaiming that she would never hold the plane for me again. You can imagine how dismayed I was to hear that.
Flight #1 - BOS to LGA. Duration ~1 hour with takeoff and landing (Aisle seat)
I talked to the flight attendant on that flight and he told me that while he didn't have my subsequent flight information, I could talk to the woman at the gate when we landed and she would help me out. So I did just that. The woman at the gate tried to be helpful, explained that I was booked on a flight leaving JFK at 11.15PM on that night (Friday). Apparently I would have to take a cab from La Guardia to JFK and I would have to go fast to catch the plane. She explained that the flight was an El Al flight from JFK to London and then after an almost 10 hour layover in Heathrow, I would be on a flight to Tel Aviv. Hooray. If that was my only option, that was what it was. (Did you catch the problem here? I didn't at the time. I'll explain later.)
After she tried to get me a better flight which just served to stress me out since I needed to rush to JFK, I got in a cab (which I was told would take 15 minutes) for an almost half hour drive to JFK. I ran into the terminal, to find that all the El Al counters were closed. I ran to security, clutching my little piece of paper itinerary thing. They asked for my boarding pass. I explained that I didn't have one. I told them I was on a flight at 11.15. They asked what airline. I told them El Al. And then it hit me. I was booked on an El Al flight on Friday night. El Al is a Jewish run airline. The would never (and have never) had flights on Shabbat. I had been booked on a non existent flight.
I felt a mixture of dejection, frustration and tiredness. I clearly needed to talk to someone at US Air and figure out what was going on. One of the guys at security took pity on me and walked with me to the airport shuttle train. He made me feel better by listening and talking to me. He told me to go to Terminal 8 and I would get it all sorted out. So I did.
US Air isn't at Terminal 8. It's at Terminal 7. It took me almost half an hour of lugging around my heavy bag to figure this out and then get back on the shuttle train. By this point I was overtired, I was in pain and I was frustrated. I wanted to walk up to the US Air agent and demand that they make this right. I finally found where the little ticket counter was and I stormed over to it... to find that it was closed and no one was there.
I fell into a nearby seat with weary tears filling my eyes. I was stuck. I knew I wasn't getting out of New York that night and I didn't know how I was getting to Israel. I finally called US Air's customer service line and started a long conversation with a woman who I was told was a supervisor and who could help me. I told her my story. I told her about the delays and the rude woman at the gate in Boston. And most importantly, I told her about being booked on a flight that didn't exist. She told me that she didn't know how that could happen and then told me that there wasn't much she could do to help me.
I then proceeded to spend about an hour (which felt like six) talking on the phone with this woman, trying to not only get a flight to Israel as soon as I could, but to get *any* but of compensation from her. I knew I had to get a hotel room for the night, but since the ticket counter was closed, they apparently couldn't give me a hotel voucher. She told me she couldn't do anything from where she was, she couldn't get me upgraded or anything. I was furious. She explained that she should be someone at the baggage claim office that could help me. So I went over there to find the door locked. She told me that the supervisor was "on the phone" and would call me back when he was done.
So I did the only thing I could do at that moment, sit on the ground and cry. It wasn't dignified and it wasn't pleasant, but it was the only thing I had the energy to do. I gathered my senses and called the travel agency that my company pointed me at to get the flight in the first place. I talked to a wonderfully understanding and calming woman who booked me a hotel room and told me how to get to the place where the shuttle would pick me up.
I was too tired to be upset at this point, so I trudged over to the shuttle pickup zone. My bag was not only kinda heavy, but the only strap was a plain nylon weave and it had begun to dig into the flesh on the insides of my hands. When I finally got to the hotel, the only guy behind the desk was arguing with domino's on behalf of a guest, explaining that he didn't get the pizza that he ordered. The guest didn't speak much English, the guy behind the desk didn't do much better. I just wanted to go to bed so I gave the guest money, bought the pizza from him and told him to just get a new one.
So I curled up in this Comfort Inn hotel room with my laptop and a pizza and I finally slept. It was nice.
My flight the next day was at noon. I had been booked on the same flight out of Philly as before, just on the next day. But since I was in JFK and not in Boston, I had to make *another* fight out of Charlotte NC to get there. Hooray. One silver lining? I managed, with help of my sob story, to get bumped to first class on my flight to Charlotte.
Flight #2 - JFK to CLT. Duration ~2 hours with takeoff and landing (First class).
Charlotte was pretty uninteresting and I was getting really tired of lugging my bag around everywhere. My hands, legs and shoulders were all hurting and I just wanted to go home. The woman at the counter at the gate was sympathetic to my story, but told me that she couldn't get me bumped. She did change my seat to an aisle rather than a center seat saying "an aisle is better every day of the week and twice on Sunday." That made me smile at least. She explained that there were no first class seats available, so there wasn't more she could do.
Flight #3 - CLT to PHL. Duration ~1.5 hours with takeoff and landing (Aisle).
Then, of course, as I'm sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off, I see that same woman quietly single out two people and take them up to first class. I was livid, but there wasn't anything I could do. So I sat there and read comics on my iPad until I stopped wanting to stab people. I ran out of comics before that happened.
I got to Philly and started the long walk to my gate. I was exhausted, in pain and upset. I went to the US Air customer service desk and ranted at the woman there. She told me that she too couldn't understand how someone could book me on a non existent flight. I told her it didn't matter how, but rather that it happened. I got her to agree to talk to the agents at the gate about upgrading me, though the plane was full, she said. She also told me that she would put a note in my records to try to get me a first class ticket home from Israel. I was exhausted and accepted it, knowing that the likelyhood of any of these things actually happening was small.
It was time for a drink. So I sat at one of the restaurants and had a drink and a sandwich. The booze helped. Especially since I had to go through a secondary security checkpoint at the gate to my flight to Israel. That and I was asking the ticket agent there about getting upgraded and he told me that there were no first class seats available. Meanwhile, the guy right next to me was talking to another agent who was explaining that he got the last first class seat. Apparently (according to the agent) he had bought that a while ago and was working out details. However, my agent told me that while first class was full, coach wasn't and I could have a whole two seat aisle to myself.
Flight #4 - PHL to TLV. Duration ~11 hours with takeoff and landing. (Window and aisle).
By the time I got to the hotel in my new rental car (which they gave me the wrong starter code for), I was exhausted and my back, neck, arms, hands and shoulders all hurt. I accidentally parked in the lot that cost money rather than the place that didn't and I ordered room service when I should have. But I was in a bed. In Israel, where I was supposed to be.
Then I went to work this morning. ugh.