I’m back from the United Kingdom! And holy hell, what an ass-pain it was to get home. I had an incredible time at Goodwood, and we have plenty more good stuff coming about that, so please stay tuned. But I have to say, mostly due to the cruel, capricious whims of weather, who lately has liked to dump rain down all over me, partially flooding my basement and then showing me a rainbow or two so I’ll get all misty-eyed and forgive them, like some kind of serial abuser, this trip has been, um, challenging.
First, there was the strange set of weather-related circumstances that had me routed through the Bermuda Triangle, and that was after my original flight was cancelled, making me have to start the trip about 12 hours later.
But the worst part was what happened yesterday, as I was trying to get home. I flew from London into JFK in New York (you know, the airport named for Jeff Fucking Koons) and then was supposed to get a flight from JFK to my home-base airport at RDU. Sadly, though, cruel cruel weather conspired again, and not only was my flight cancelled, they couldn’t book me on any other flight until motherscratching Wednesday.
Wednesday.
Matt was a sweetie and offered to let me stay at his place just outside the city and feed me good food and all of that, and while I appreciated that, I just wanted to get home. I checked other airlines, trains, everything, and eventually finally found the answer, and it was a painful one: the bus.
Yes, the bus! There was a bus, for $80, less than what it would have cost to Uber to Matt’s place, that would leave at 10:00 pm and get me home by 7 in the morning. I bought a ticket, oddly curious about what the experience would be like.
Next thing I knew I was in Chinatown, in a tiny and kinda dingy waiting room with so much weed smoke in the air the ceiling fan was telling me how freaky it would be if the color red it saw was different than the color red I saw.
I mean, I’m not expecting much for $80, and really it’s fine, but the contrast between that environment and where I was about 24 hours before, when I was within elegant-gin-and-tonic-spitting distance of a literal Duke, was pretty jarring.
The biggest issue that I noticed with the cheap, last-minute bus experience I think has to do with information: finding out anything is a pretty chaotic process. Is the bus idling outside the one I’m supposed to get on? No idea, at least until finally someone yelled something about Indiana. So that wasn’t it.
Eventually, enough people seemed to be mentioning “Raleigh” so I got onto the plain white oddly generic bus that was probably headed to where I needed to go, and once on, it was generally clean and in decent condition so I can’t really complain about that.
It wasn’t easy to sleep on the bus at all, and the lack of communication still remained an issue: we stopped a few times, and it wasn’t clear if these were stop stops to let people out or just opportunities to walk out and pee? I’m still not sure.
Eventually, we arrived at my stop, which was not a bus depot or anything that I was expecting; it was a strangely desolate and maybe out-of-business shopping center. I had to look at the map on my phone for the address to know that this was, in fact, where I needed to be. If I didn’t realize that, I think I’d be in Georgia now.
What if I was asleep? Or confused? Or both?
Whatever. I’m home finally, and that’s what matters. And I’m thankful for that $80 overnight bus.
This was not an easy travel experience, but I can’t say it was horrible, exactly. Just you know, kinda shitty. I’m exhausted and dirty and cranky but I’m home, and that’s what matters. But I bet you have better stories, and I want to hear them! What kinds of misery have you had to endure after a trip just to get home?
Kvetch away!
Saddest trip of my life. My mother was on her deathbed in a Boston suburb. I was visiting waiting for the inevitable. She had lasted a bit longer than anyone thought possible and I was out of bereavement time for my then-new job (less than 1 month). I had to return home to Denver, knowing I would never see my beloved mother alive again.
I had my ticket, flight info, etc. My sister drove me to Logan airport and dropped me off. We couldn’t talk, so I just entered the terminal. I don’t remember the details or even the airline. (I think it was Delta, but it doesn’t really matter.)
What I do remember is it was one of those days about a decade ago when everything melted down for the airline and flights were getting canceled and delayed left and right. There wasn’t a good option from Boston to Denver left that day, so I was offered to rebook to JFK and then Denver. I took that.
Got to JFK and it was its typical zoo, and the Denver flight I was scheduled to take was delayed an hour or two. Fine. I needed lunch and stopped at “The Palm” and had an appetizer, 2 drinks, and a burger. $97 (2016) later, I had lunch and some sticker shock. But I needed a little numbing from all the emotions and the drinks helped.
I got back to the gate my flight was supposed to leave from and found out the gate had been changed along with a little extra delay added. This became a theme. There was an Amex lounge, and I figured I needed some more emotional numbing juice. An airport lounge would be a good quiet place to do that. But nope, the two Amex cards I had didn’t get me in. I offered to pay whatever they wanted for a day pass, but none were available as they were at capacity.
I said I’d go ahead and apply for a Platinum card to get in (I would have qualified) and they said that’s fine, but I would need the physical card to enter, so even if I was approved … blah blah blah. No quiet lounge for me, so back to the zoo.
The theme of delay plus gate change continued for a few more hours.
The entire time I was texting my wife, making comments on various things and people I saw and generally trying to distract myself without getting completely soused. Eight or so hours after coming to JFK, I got on a plane for Denver. I was exhausted physically and emotionally.
The plane door closed, and we backed up a few feet and … stopped. Something was delaying our departure from the airport, but technically we had “left” because door closed and jetway retracted. It was another 90 or so minutes before we took off. I think at that point I was well over 12 hours from the time I left Mom’s house, which was 6 or 7 hours more than it should have been. And I still had the flight from JFK to Denver, plus a 45-minute drive home.
I arrived in Denver and got home, collapsing into bed. I slept in the next day. My wife was very understanding. My mother passed onto her next journey 2 days later. In the meantime, I had gotten sick and was not able to make the trip back to Boston for the funeral. My family was understanding. I was oddly OK missing it since funerals are for the living anyway, and my mother and I had good time together in her last days where she was coherent and we said everything we needed to say.
I know the delays and awful “can I please just get home now” trip wasn’t necessarily JFK airport’s fault, but I have had other bad incidents traveling through there including lost luggage. I avoid JFK at all costs and haven’t been there since. I miss my mother terribly, but I’m glad we got to spend some time together and say goodbye.
If you want to read about something similar but worse/head-scratching, but dark humor, search online for the Fung Wah bus that used to run from Boston to NYC and back. It was legendary in New England and the source of many impecunious students’ scariest rides ever.
tldr: The fastest vehicles on the New England Interstates, albeit with minimal or failing inspections, many fires, and drivers with no CDLs.
Ended up stuck in Oakley, KS when winter weather closed I-70 trying to get back to Denver when I was a kid. All hotels full, ended up at a church which opened its doors to the stuck travelers. We had a dog with us and they wouldn’t let the dog in, so my dad went out every hour or so to check on the dog and start the car to warm it up for him until the road opened again.
Which is to say most of the adventures I’ve had in travel more involve the trip out, not the trip back.
Not the worst I’ve had, but probably the funniest.
Coming back home for the weekend from a work trip. Flight is a little barely over 2 hour puddle-jump in a United Express ERJ-145 (basically an oversized LearJet with all of 50 seats). Critically the plane has a single toilet, and it was an international flight (Veracruz, Mexico to Houston).
Get to the gate and before boarding starts they announce “btw the toilet is broken on the plane, go before you board”. Ok, nbd, 2 hours. Get on the plane and they announce “So, according to United policy we can’t fly this long without a toilet, so we’re going to stop in Harlingen (South Texas) to let you use the toilet”. (I’m sitting in seat 1A so I hear the pilot tell the FA afterwards that they flew down last night with it busted and no one cared). Ok, Annoying, but we’ll roll with it.
Take off, fly all of 1 hour to Harlingen, land, taxi to the airport. And wait, and wait, and wait. Again, Seat 1A so I can hear the pilot on the radio. Since we left Veracruz the pilot has been asking for clarifications from dispatch with no answer. Pilot is asking for an air-stair so we can get off the plane, no answer. Pilot is asking do we need to disembark all the passengers, or just anyone who needs the bathroom, no answer. Pilot is asking do we need to clear customs, no answer. It sounds like apparently the dispatch told us to divert to Harlingen, and then stopped taking our calls, so the pilot eventually literally radioed another United plane that was there and asked them to radio dispatch to figure out what we’re supposed to do.
Finally we get answers, they roll an air-star out, we all have to disembark and clear customs after they find someone at CBP to deal with us (technically an international airport, but has almost no international flights so a sudden 50 people is a problem).
However between the delays from dispatch not answering the phone and the fact that Harlingen doesn’t have a bathroom before customs (and Houston does) we literally didn’t have access to a bathroom until after we would have had we flown direct to Houston.
And the absolute icing on the cake…the next day I hopped in my car and drove down to visit my (now) wife’s family, 30 minutes from the Harlingen airport.
I’ve told at least parts of this story here before because it involves a Nissan Versa Note, but here it goes again:
I was in Ireland for a work conference (I know, my job sucks 😉 ) and they got their one snowstorm of the decade a couple of days before I was supposed to leave. Dublin basically shut down, including the airport. I spent an extra two days there before I could get a flight out, which wasn’t terrible (although, again, most things were shut down so it wasn’t as fun as it could have been).
I finally got on a plane, narrowly missed another snowstorm on the East coast, then got back to Minneapolis and discovered I had left my credit card in Dublin (or at least I think that’s where I lost it). On top of that, a snowstorm was hitting MSP at about the time I landed. My connecting flight kept getting pushed back…and back…and cancelled at about 11:50 PM. I tried to get my checked bag, but because it was after midnight by the time I got there everyone had gone home and we were all stuck with just what was in our carry-ons. Not that I had any clean clothes left anyway since the trip ran over by two days.
I was not wild about spending another night in a hotel and not even having clean clothes to change into after a full day of travel, so I booked a one-way rental from the airport to my destination. The first rental car I tried apparently had no bluetooth (at least not that I could find), so I switched to the aforementioned Versa Note and drove home through a snowstorm. The trip that normally takes less than 90 minutes took 2.5 hours and many, many people were stuck in the ditch.
Then I got home and discovered my driveway had been plowed in, even though I had a snow removal service hired for while I was gone. Problem was I told them I would be home two days prior so they stopped coming. I decided “F it” and rammed the snow bank to see if I could power my way into the garage. It’s a Versa Note, so the answer was “no”. I jumped out, grabbed my shovel, cleared two tracks for the tires and parked the car. By this time it was after 3 AM, but I finally got to sleep and sometime the next afternoon woke up and went out to the airport to pick up my bag.
In retrospect, driving through a snowstorm on no sleep was not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I survived.
On the first day of a 3 day kayak trip on the Rogue River, the steak from the night before decided to leave my body while going down a major rapid. Can’t get off the river, can’t paddle, can’t eat, can’t drink. For three days I sat in our support raft doing nothing but add chum to the river waters until there was nothing left to donate. Somehow I managed to get the 6 hours drive home, but how, I don’t remember.
We car-pooled from Sacramento to the LA area for a college speech/debate competition. I was driving my ’71 Fiat 128 sedan. During our stay my clutch showed signs of failing, so I drove a little as possible. During the drive home I spent as much time as possible drafting whatever vehicle I was behind to reduce the load on the clutch. One other vehicle of our group stayed with me, just in case, which turned out to be necessary. My clutch finally gave out near Coalinga CA, about 200 miles from home. We parked it, and I joined the others in the Datsun pickup as the fourth person. I sat one someone’s knees and had to learn against the windshield to fit. I think I actually slept. Dad and I drove our truck back down the next day in our ’64 F100 crewcab, hitched up the Fiat, and got towed home with me in the Fiat.
Not as terrible as some but it was an experience.
In Sept 2001 I was visiting my future wife in far eastern Russia. The terrorist even occurred and most air travel plans fell apart. Two days after my planned departure a week later in September the various travel bookers pieced together my return itinerary.
I am 6’5 and have circulatory problems so I prebook with specific seats with extra leg room. All my pre booked seating was null and void.
We were escorted by what seemed like a full company of Russian soldiers to a decrepit looking Antonov AN-24 (I think that what it was) for a jump to Hakodate Japan and after a 5 hr wait onto a JAL Boeing 777 to Haneda. Then bussed to Narita where I had another 4 hours before loading onto a 737 for the jump to Seoul Korea. Departed Seoul on a Lorean 747 for LA 8 hours later. Minor police presence in Japan and Korea.
Arrived in LA about 12 hrs later IIRC for another 10 y hour wait. LA had a significant military presence which was new to me. When I booked in and checked my luggage the agent noticed an available seat on a flight departing in 4 hrs for Vancouver. Yay!
Made it to Vancouver and had another delay of 4 hrs before flying home to Ottawa. A surreal scene in Vancouver when loading, was a gauntlet of CBSA and, airline agents, checking id’s passports and tickets while a phalanx of RCMP loitered around looking bored and serious at the same time.
I think I slept for two days after the travel ordeal.
None of mine have been “I just wanna get home,” but the “Damn it! Can’t we get going already?” opposite. 2010- leaving to go on my study abroad in Russia…Get caught in awful traffic as usual trying to get to Hartsfield-Latoya Jackson International Airport and Weave Emporium, which at 5am is leaning heavily on the SNAFU side of things. Get on the plane right as a wave of thunderstorms come through, necessitating a 2 hour ground stop. Lufthansa of course is accommodating with snacks and drinks. Finally, we push away from the gate, only for us to spend another 2 hours on the tarmac. Once airborne, we have an uneventful flight, as I took advantage of all you can drink beer and generally kept to myself. Of course, due to the volcano eruption in iceland, we are taking a longer course to Frankfurt. Land in Frankfurt, take the train to the city, get some food, get back to the airport, and board the next leg of the flight. I’m crammed next to some 7 foot tall giant who refuses to get off his cell phone the entire flight to St. Petersburg. Guess what? The weather from Atlanta followed me! Storms at Pulkova, and after circling for a while, the pilot decided to “LEEROY JENKINNNS” it and just land despite the heavy downpour. Well, we slid off the runway into the overrun area and had to be towed to the gate. 28 hours after boarding in Atlanta, we were finally on the ground in Russia.
Myself and two mates were in Morocco for a short holiday. On the last day we got to the airport, walked up to the desk and presented our tickets (this was back in 2005 when paper tickets still existed, and smartphones did not), only to be told “your tickets have been cancelled”.
After some discussion, we learned that the flight back to London yesterday had been cancelled, so everyone from that flight had been bounced onto our flight, and there was now no space for us (or anyone else scheduled to fly that day).
After pointing out that a) we had tickets and b) we kinda needed to get back home, the ticket counter guys mulled over the apparently unique idea that we might still want a way home, and that we weren’t going to just turn around and leave.
Eventually they came to a conclusion that maybe there was something that could be done, and started ringing around. The end result was one friend being put on an Air France flight to Paris, and thence probably to London (this whole discussion was being conducted in a mixture of bad French and worse English). Myself my other mate were hustled to a corner of the airport to what was clearly supposed to be an internal Royal Air Maroc flight (no passport control, no nothing), on a tiny 20 passenger puddle-jumper, which hopped across the Med and left us in Malaga.
From there we ended up on a BA flight (in business class no less!), back to London, where we had to wait for our Paris-bound mate to arrive, as we were all staying in their house that evening.
I was in Little Rock, AR when the entire middle of the country was hit with an ice storm. My flight was cancelled, I knew it would be two days until I got on another (that’s just how long it takes the airlines to get the planes in the right places).
Figured I’d spend a couple of days chilling in the hotel. I check in and walked across to the Waffle House. Before I even paid I realized I needed to get home. I checke out of my hotel and took the shuttle back to the airport. I got one of the last rental cars available and started driving back to Boston through the ice storm.
I saw some TERRIBLE driving on that trip. People who don’t often drive in those conditions should stay off the roads. Three times I saw a car move out of the ‘clear’ lane to pass the semi truck in front of them. They slowly white knuckle it past the truck, and as soon as they possibly can they cut back into the ‘clear’ lane in front of the truck and slow down.
Truck then has to brake in very low-grip conditions and jackknifes. I saw the maneuver more than three times, but three times it resulted in the truck sliding off the roadway.
March 2020. Just as the Covid pandemic was recognized as a serious problem my wife and I needed to get home to Oregon from Tasmania before they closed all the borders. Cutting short our dream vacation. Flying back to Melbourne was easy. Then wife was making reservations for the flights home. She’d make reservations and get a message an hour later that those fights were cancelled. This happened over and over all day and it was looking like we might be stranded in Oz for the next few months.
Finally, we got some reservations that stuck. Flying to Singapore then to Dubai then straight over the north pole to San Francisco. We nearly got stuck in Singapore. They closed the airport to all flights shortly after our plane took off. The same thing happened in Dubai. Nearly stranded there and our plane was the last one allowed to leave.
When we landed in San Francisco the airport was deserted like a post apocalyptic movie. We had landed late and had to run to collect our bags and hope to still be able to catch our next flight. Our bags were the only ones on the carousel. W heard our names on the PA and ran to our gate 45 minutes late. Thankfully they had held the plane – there were only 2 other passengers who had a similar story. Our flight from Portland to Eugene was the same. Us and 2 other travelers. We had to sit way in the back for balance. We had spent 48 hours in airports and airplanes but finally got home.
Those flights from Melbourne to Singapore to Dubai to San Francisco? The only seats we could get were on Emirates in first class. Shockingly deluxe. I still don’t know what that cost and I never want to know.
I vividly recall being on a work trip around that time. I flew into Detroit on a Sunday, there was some rumblings of Covid on the news but it just seemed a bit alarmist. I think it was Wednesday that I got to O’hare for my flight home and the TVs were talking about the airports in NYC and San Francisco potentially being shutdown to international travel. Boy, that escalated quick.
I happened to know 2 people that were in New Zealand at the time. Both had driven over the border to fly from Toronto. Both managed to make it home, barely, before NZ closed the border (at the time we jokingly said it would be nice to get stuck there for a couple weeks but had no idea how long they would have actually been stuck). Both had to make 3-4 leg flights back to the US because they couldn’t fly to Toronto and cross the border – similar 36-48 hours in airports as you. The one took a bus to YYZ but the other drove, so their car was stuck in an airport parking lot indefinitely – luckily they had friends of relatives in Toronto who could pick it up (after they mailed them a key) before they racked up however many days/weeks of parking fees.
Won’t get into all the details, but it took me 55 hours to fly to home on the east coast from Pitkin County Airport, Colorado. All weather related. It was a holiday weekend, so although I was able to rent a basic hotel room for the first night, it cost almost $700 for the 10 hours I had it. They wouldn’t let anyone stay overnight in the airport. The next night in Chicago I got a room for a decent price, but had only 5 hours between check in and check out.
I wouldn’t have bothered with that Chicago hotel. With such a shirt turnaround I’d be to worried about over-sleeping to fall asleep in the first place.
Ugh. Returning to Portland from New Orleans in 2006 on Continental. I was on the first flight to Houston at roughly 6am, and with the time change, I was scheduled to be back in my own house by noon Oregon time. Unfortunately, Houston was fogged in that morning, so we were temporarily rerouted to Alexandria, Louisiana, where we sat on the tarmac for a good two or three hours with the plane shut down. No AC, and no getting off the plane. Did I mention that this was in June, which is a terrible time to be sitting in a hermetically sealed tube with no airflow on the pavement in Louisiana?
So we finally get to Houston and disembark, and… there’s just nobody there. Literally every passenger missed their connecting flight, and there was no one there to tell us what to do or where to go to figure out how to get home. We were literally milling around like cattle, waiting for a cowboy to direct us to the correct corral. After a half hour of this, I took note of the PA mic that the gate agents were using to announce boarding. When I saw an opening, I walked over and grabbed the mic, and said something to the effect of the following:
“Attention, literally anyone within the sound of my voice wearing literally any clothing with a Continental logo on it: you have dozens of people at gate (whatever) who have all missed their connecting flights due to the fog delay, and have absolutely no idea how to get home. Please get someone the hell out here to fix this, right now.” It drew around of applause. That was the only response it got at all.
People finally just started walking down the terminal blindly, trying to look for some answers. I finally pulled aside a Continental agent and insisted that she tell me where I needed to go to find a way home. She directed me to the Continental customer service desk on the terminal. It took an hour to get to the head of the line, at which point I found that the only way for me to get home today was to be diverted to Las Vegas, then on to Portland. Instead of being home by noon local time, I didn’t sit down on my bed to take my shoes off until 1 in the morning – with work the next day, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I had gotten home at noon like I was supposed to.
It wasn’t even the delay itself that bothered me – it was the way the airline could not be bothered to help us one bit with the problems they had dumped in our lap. We all had to find our own solutions for new flights, and there was no solution to sweating our balls off on the tarmac in Alexandria at all. We simply sat there sweating our balls off.
Torch goes simple, he goes easy, he goes Greyhound. Why?
Cause he wished he was a little bit taller, wished he was a baller…
Well, impending diarrhea ranks right up there. Hoping you make it inside, whether home or hotel before you can’t hold it any longer is really unpleasant.
Especially if you can’t. You don’t want to know how I know.
I had a sinus infection and boarded a flight from Chicago to Dallas. Single seat in a three row. The party of two never showed up! I had the whole 3 seats to myself and I sat in the middle. It was a dream flight… until we started the descent and I found out what it feels like when you can’t de-pressurize your ears/head.
Yeah. That’s pretty bad. I flew from Orlando (MCO) to Minneapolis (MSP) enroute to Seattle (SEA) with a pretty bad sinus infection and my ears were stuck at 8000 feet or so. Sitting in a chair in the waiting area for my second flight, they let go and the pain was so intense I fell over sideways. My wife accused me of being dramatic, but it hurt like hell.
For real! I had hardly anything going up and thought maybe I had dodged whatever was going to happen. Boy was I wrong. I was at my destination so I had to then endure an hour drive back home like that. Horrible! At least I had home to keep me sane, I couldn’t imagine knowing you’d be going back up in the air and doing it again!
Fortunately, the 2nd leg wasn’t as bad as the 1st. I really don’t know why.
Sudafed can do wonders temporarily for drying out sinuses (as long it’s something you can take). The real stuff only, none of the lame substitute that even the manufacturers finally admitted doesn’t work. Always have some with me when flying.
And now you have to jump through hoops to get it because it’s a precursor for meth. It does have some blood pressure effects that could be bad for some. I’m sure meth would be worse, lol!
Yes, my wife doesn’t take it because it makes her heart race (and probably spike her blood pressure). It is annoying these days because you have to sign, show ID etc., can’t buy except in person, blah blah blah. Seems like we could come up something better as in going through hoops just if you’re buying more than a certain amount. Or something common sense like that.
Caught norovirus before a 14 hour flight. I just wanted to get home without crapping my pants. I succeeded.
I was traveling through Heathrow when they had their world wide IT meltdown back in 2017. We were stuck on the ramp for 6 hours after an 11 hour flight because there was no way to get us a gate, it was gridlock on the taxiways. The captain told us nothing worked, and he was trying to figure out what was going on with his personal cell phone. After a few hours he basically said “fuck it, no one is getting paid on this plane anymore. Feel free to help yourself to whatever in the galley, see an empty first or business class seat? Take it. And if you want a tour of the cockpit come on up.” I took him up on that and got a real nice walkthrough of the 787s cockpit while sitting in the captains chair.
Once we finally got off the plane it was complete chaos on the airport. BA had sent their staff home because none of the terminals worked so they couldn’t do anything. This left thousands of people with no flights, no where to go, and no one to talk to. All the hotels were full, there were no trains or other flights to Germany available. And worst yet all the food service was either shut down or out of food.
I managed to grab some water bottles from a Heathrow employee and was starting to look for a place to basically camp out. At this point my wife burst into tears. She had been through a lot the last few months and just wanted to be with her family. Then that same employee who gave us water rolled back over to us (he was in a wheel chair). He said something to the affect of “I cant sit here and let you cry like that miss” and then he offered us his spare room for as long as we needed. We took his offer and found ourselves driving through London with a total stranger to his apartment. It was a strange strange night. But him and his fiancee were absolutely wonderful people.
Next morning his fiancee took us out to get clothes and get ourselves sorted. We were in London 3 days before we were able to get a flight even remotely close to where we needed to go.
We’re still in touch with those two and even took a trip to Vienna with them.
People can sometimes be utterly amazing. Great story.
People can be so cruel, and they can also be so kind. I am glad you found a couple of the latter. I’m happy you’re still in touch with them. This was a really touching story.
I like to think most people on this site would be the latter.
I actually have two, one for each definition of “home,” and both include funerals!
1. A “fun” quirk of Amtrak is that if you want to get to the west coast, you have approximately four options, and three of them go to California. However! Conveniently my back home area is the Fargo, ND area, which has, yes, an Amtrak stop! There is one train a day in either direction, westbound at 3:30ish AM and eastbound at 4:15ish AM. The vaunted Empire Builder route has historically been one of the least on-time trains in the entire network, because there are TWO east-west rail routes in North Dakota, which means every single bit of freight that passes through the state basically gets one of two routings, one of which has the Amtrak route on it as well.
As we all know, Amtrak is required to give frieght right-of-way. And that Amtrak line happens to pass through Williston, aka the center of the fracking oil fields, which produce a shitload of rail traffic. Oh, this route also has a major segment through the Red River Valley, which is prone to springtime flooding.
So! My grandma dies. We head up to Fargo with very little issue except for being late on the westbound because of rail traffic, though we barely made the Waterloo-to-Chicago segment on time as well (we lived in Indiana at the time.) The real fun was on the way back.
We get to the station (thankfully enclosed and heated) at around 4am, expecting the train on time. The station was expecting the train on time. 4:15 rolls around, no train. 4:45. 5:00. Every 20 minutes or so the poor desk clerk would let everyone know that they didn’t have any news or updates. Finally sometime around 6:00am we were informed that the train was delayed due to both freight traffic and flooding. They’d be arriving in about 20 minutes. It was another hour. The sun was starting to come up. We’d been at the station around three extra hours, but finally we were on the train. We learned that our train home was the last eastbound train for three weeks because of flooding on the tracks.
Anyway, back homeward! Except the train just… kept getting later. By the time we’d gotten to Chicago we missed the early train we’d booked back to Indiana, and had to take the later one, and we pulled into the station as that train was boarding. And then we had to drive home from Waterloo to Fort Wayne. Just awful. I love riding the train, but by god the US needs to get its head out of its ass.
2. My high school friend is in a motorcycle accident in Wyoming and passes. I’m going to fly from (again) Fort Wayne to (again) Chicago to (again) Fargo. You’ll note both Fort Wayne and Fargo are not exactly hubs. In fact, Fargo is only served by American (regional routes), Delta, and United, plus a number of irrelevant transient carriers. I, like a fool, pick United.
I get to Chicago no problem, but at the beginning of an ice storm. This already throws things into disarray as this storm affects basically the whole Great Lakes area/upper Midwest. Flights are delayed, rerouted, etc.
But THEN.
Someone sets fire to a main radar station for O’Hare. ATC already has their hands full and then they lose like a third of their eyes. But every single airline jumps into action.
Except United. Where is my flight? I don’t know. United doesn’t know. They don’t know where the plane is or when it will arrive. They don’t know where the crew is or when any of them will arrive. We’ll get a plane but not a crew. A crew but not a plane. Nothing lines up. Finally, eight hours after we were scheduled to take off, we get a plane AND a crew. The crew is ON THE PLANE doing preflight checks and then United just… cancels the flight. O’Hare was fine with it taking off, United just. Cancelled it. With the crew on the plane and the passengers in line ready to begin boarding.
United decides to call it an act of god and doesn’t give anyone refunds, exchanges, or hotel credit. Basically everyone is on their own.
The next flight to Fargo is scheduled to fly out after my friend’s service is scheduled to start. I admit defeat, cancel both Fargo legs out of O’Hare (eating that cost, because cheap air travel means no take-backs), and just fly back home to Fort Wayne on the next available flight. Which is several hours before the next Fargo flight.
And so I slept in O’Hare seats, and got to find out how weird a deserted airport is when even the music is off.
There is no good way to travel. I love cars but hate highway driving (growing up in Fargo will do that), and every single other method involves some sort of corporate ass-covering because something will inevitably happen when you actually rely on them. You just need to get somewhere and don’t care when? Cool. But if you expect to be anywhere on time, good luck.
Just to be clear for anyone reading this that isn’t in the loop with Amtrak or may think trains suck because they’ve only rode them in the US or read US based horror stories; federal law mandates that Amtrak passenger cars be given rail preference over freight trains. The problem is that Amtrak rents/leases all of its track use from the big 4 privately owned freight companies in the US. These 4 freight companies regularly disregard this law of preference, causing Amtrak passenger trains to be stuck behind slower moving freight trains. Furthermore, these freight rail companies are running trains at such overloaded and dangerous lengths they no longer fit the pull off side tracks built into the rail roads to allow trains to pass each other on the same line. This increase in length is also contributing to the recent freight derailments we’ve seen, propublica has a great article on it.
A train being three hours late is entirely normal for the the UK as well. We invented trains and railways, but we’re rubbish at them.
Actually, Britain has invented all sorts of things we’re rubbish at.
This struck a chord. And inspired logorrhea. Bear with me.
Back in about ‘09 I had to go from the Central Valley to LA to pick up a car I was very happy to have found: a 2003 540i M-sport wagon. It was my first time conducting a purchase so remote, but it had gone well: The shop that did the PPI performed a handful of repairs and helped arrange some minor paint work and detailing. Within a couple weeks the car was in nearly perfect condition and ready for a fun drive home. I tossed my radar detector in my bag and got dropped off at the Amtrak station in Merced.
This was the first time I’d taken a train since wee childhood, so it was effectively a new experience. A friend had just taken a trip on the Coast Starlight and raved about it, so I was guardedly optimistic. The Amtrak San Joaquins line, however, turned out to be an entirely different beast than the Coast Starlight. If it were to have an expressive name like that, it might be the Prison Industrial Complex All-Stations Regional. “Now leaving Corcoran; next stop Wasco.” And so on down the line. Few of my fellow passengers disembarked at cities like Madera or Hanford, but they were filing off and on in droves when we reached yet another depot serving California’s numerous correctional facilities.
The crowd reflected this, largely consisting of desperate-looking women staring out the windows and anxious kids fidgeting around as the cars filled up. About halfway through the train ride I went to check out the canteen car, decided that the most appealing option on the menu was Nothing, and went back to my seat. It was occupied by a sleeping lady, so I looked around and eventually found a booth with ample space, shared only by a chunky young guy passed out face-down on the table.
He woke up in half an hour, raising a face that looked pretty heavily lived-in even after the laminate-induced flatness wore off. He told me he was going to LA to support a friend’s MMA bout and we had a decent convo. Once we stopped at Bakersfield, he congratulated me on my purchase and I wished him and his friend luck.
I say “stopped at Bakersfield” because that was the end of the line for the Carceral Daylight. The rest of my trip was to be via bus, an aging coach with desperately needed air conditioning that struggled to produce a puff of cool air and then gave up completely. In a similar manner, the bus groaned up the hills to Lancaster where it limped into a depot and died, stranding us in the summer heat.
First they sent for a repair crew. After hours of waiting, they pronounced it irreparable on site and another bus was called. Hours later, that one arrived. At that point, I was unlikely to make it to the airport in Burbank by the time the shop closed, so I phoned them and they agreed to take me from Bob Hope to my car after hours… shout-out to Bimmers Clinic in Reseda.
With the sun setting in The Valley that most people know by that name, I plugged in the Valentine One, turned the key, grinned at the growl of the yet-to-develop-timing-chain-rattle V8, and considered my drive back. I had hoped to take a coastal route, spending some time in Santa Barbara and maybe visiting friends in Cambria, but it was too late for that. Plan B would take me to Ojai and then on home. In LA-speak, that would be from the 101 to the 118 to the 126 to the 150 and then on up Highway 33, which was almost the road I lived on.
Things started getting weird again as I climbed into the darkening canyons of the 150. This car was my first one with an onboard nav system. It was DVD-based and eventually found its highest purpose by becoming an outdated parasitic drain that killed an expensive battery and took two shops and many bills to finally be diagnosed and put down. My initial experience wasn’t any better.
Once the headlights sensed dusk and flicked on, I glanced at the screen and saw that the 150 was about a mile above me and I was on… what now? I zoomed out and got schooled: Still on the 150, just one of many switchbacks from a late dinner in the land of ashrams and crystal boutiques.
After a quick bite in Ojai, I forged onward and upward along the 33. I’d read a few articles touting the southern end of this familiar road as a driver’s paradise and was looking forward to it, if not exactly as a night drive. Onward it went – and VERY upward, eventually reaching the Pine Mountain Summit at an elevation of 5160 feet. There were A LOT of twisties along the way, which probably would have been thrilling earlier in the day, but in my fatigued state, they made the drive seem like a death race.
Eventually the mountains gave way to high desert straightaways with a lunar pall. Tall cacti loomed in the halogen glow. The place belonged to strange nocturnal creatures and I found myself watching out for owls swooping down on the kangaroo rats that skittered across the road. After what seemed like an eternity, a sign appeared on the unbroken highway for Maricopa, then Taft… the first of the many prison towns I was to pass again in reverse. It was a desolate drive and as I neared home I was overjoyed to merge onto I-5, something that’s never happened before or since.
Next Tuesday I’m flying to Boise to get a CLK55 that I bought under similar circumstances. Wish me luck, fellow Autopians!
Break a leg!!
My worst was a business trip home to central plains of the US after a week in New Delhi.
Got up Friday morning local time (Thursday evening Central time), went into the office for the last day, then they took us to dinner, and finally off to the airport for a midnight departure. I made the mistake of getting a soda with ice before we boarded, which would become an issue before I made it home. (At the advice of others, I’d been using only bottled water the whole trip, including when rinsing my tooth brush.)
The flight to the East Coast lasted about 17 hours, on a fully loaded 777. Economy class, because my employer was cheap. It was horribly uncomfortable, because there was some equipment box under the seat in front of me so I couldn’t stretch out. (And here I thought I was a little bit lucky scoring a window seat. Not so much.) I don’t think I slept at all. Then the runs started hitting about 12 hours into the flight.
Finally landed and cleaned myself up as best I could during my 2.5 hour layover for the flight to Denver. (The rest of the group had a short layover for their direct flight to Omaha.)
Then the 4.5 hour flight to Denver, followed by a couple more hours of layover, followed by another hour and forty five minute flight home. Lots of quality time in the toilets both on the ground and in the air.
My wife picked me up at the airport at 5:30 PM Saturday. Got home about a half hour later (after a brief stop through a drive thru because I was craving a something made out of beef), and immediately hit the shower for the first time in about 47 hours.
The pants and underwear went in the garbage.
1. I hope you were like 27 then, because that’s the kind of stamina required for what you just described
2. Definitely hard to top this off, you win!
Early 40s, actually. I went to bed right after the shower and slept for about 14 hours.