March 30, 2009: A funny thing happened on the way to.....

A funny thing happened on the way to.....

I love to fly. I really enjoy the whole idea of a day that begins in one location, and ends in another. what I don't enjoy however is the whole kabuki dance that accompanies flying. Stand here, do this, put your information here, take off some of your clothes, next in line, hurry along please sir, and on and on and on. It's a sad reflection of the age we live in, and for me, robs some of the magic inherent in sitting in a chair in one country and getting out of it in another.

Incompetental airlines have an interesting interpretation of "cabin crew", it's more like "cabin posse" or "cabin hommes". Silly me, I thought "crew" implied people who actually worked on a vessel, and not crew as in frat buddies. These guys whooped it up at the back of the plane pretty much the whole flight, taking time out to do the drinks run (by which I mean "here's a cup, if you actually got anything in it, then bonus!), and the evening meal :

"Lasagna or chicken?"

"I'll have the lasagna, please!"

"Sorry, we're out of lasagna."

"So my choice is "or chicken"?" "We weren't expecting a run on lasagna."

And I thought Eddie Izzard just made that whole routine up (if you haven't seen Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill", then that whole conversation will be lost on you)

Anyway, one anaemic salad, one chicken "cacchiatorre" (it may as well have been chicken a la Campbell's tomato soup) and a cup of the skankiest coffee EVER, and it was time for a snooze.

I don't sleep on planes.

The flight itself was actually really good, the pilot did one of the smoothest landings I've ever sat through (SouthWest airlines, are you listening??) and I had a very interesting conversation with a man across the aisle from me who was taking his family back home to Pakistan. It reminded me that when all the paranoia is gone, there are people who love their kids, want the best for their families, and that "core values" aren't necessarily an exclusive american concept, no matter how much the US media wants you to believe it. I like finding common connections with people from other cultures.

The cabin crew however need to be told that if you are on an English speaking flight, from an English speaking destination to an English speaking destination, it's all kinds of rude to hold conversations in catalan, esperanto, pig-latin, or whatever-the-hell-language it was. 'nuff said on that.

So, just like incompetental airlines promised, we made it to London, but the problem still remained, that of our connecting flight. Here's where i made my second mistake, that of asking the party planner/cabin crew Lebowski about connections.

"Where are you connecting to?"

"Belfast"

"Oh, you can just jump on the next flight, they go there like every hour or something."


OMG!!!!!!


My inside my head voice came out again. "OK, thanks for being completely unhelpful. I'll just ask someone inside, maybe I'll get a useful answer."

Soon after the call came over the intercom: "For those passengers who need assistance with connecting flights, a concierge wearing a grey jacket will be standing by as you disembark (I love "disembark". I hate "de-plane". "De-plane" is a word that was made up because someone couldn't or wouldn't take the time to find out if there was a proper word for "getting off of something").

Anyway, all will be good. Look for the concierge, all will be righteous.

She wasn't hard to find.


We were met by a frazzled young lady who was deep in argument with a KLM ground crew person. The topic under discussion was "who was logged in". Miss concierge obviously felt she was logged in going by the tone of her voice, but for some reason couldn't make the mental leap between "I'm logged in" to "Now I can do stuff". We stood by while she kept telling Mr. KLM how alt+tab wasn't doing anything, even though she was logged in. I told my mother, who was travelling with us, (and happened to be at the other side of the room) "It would be nice if they had a computer person to help sort this out." I had to say this loud enough for mum to hear of course, it's not my fault that everyone else was listening in on our conversation.

Ms. concierge had by this point worked herself into quite the lather. The effort of winning the "who's logged in" debate obviously left her drained, she kept telling us "I can't help you, I can't help you". Finally she said "if you could all just go, just leave now" and pointed to a corridor.

Incompetent-al airlines, you really try too hard!

I'm laughing at this point, the whole farce has deteriorated to comical.

She wasn't expecting the chorus of "GO WHERE???" that came back in response to her request.

She got on her walkie-talkie, told the mother ship that she had "hostile passengers" (hostile?!?) and only then did the information spigot get turned. I guess she finally got logged on after all.

So now we're making our way to the BMI terminal, our connection to Belfast. Once again, a kabuki dance, and can I just say, the security clearing process in London Heathrow, an airport that is by far busier than most if not any US airport, was a completely smooth, respectful and civilized process. Are you listening, TSA? Take some notes!

We get to the BMI desk, and get on the next flight to Belfast. I wish I could say the same thing for our bags.......

So here we are. Planes and rental car later, we end up bagless in Ballycastle (at least unloading the car didn't take long). The kids were tired somewhere over Greenland, and were pretty much giving everyone the stink-eye until we got here.

Most of the bags made it to Belfast later, and were delivered by the airline last night. I'm still missing a bag, which contains my overcoat. Ballycastle is a coastal town, so an overcoat might come in handy. I'm not so worried about the overocat however, I'm a bit more concerned about the car keys that are in the overcoat. Pushing the minivan back from Newark to Maryland when we get back might take a bit of time......

As I said, Ballycastle is a coastal town, and like so many coastal towns here, have fishing boats bringing their catches in regularly. I thought it would be fun for Conor to see some of the fishing boats, so he and I went down to the Marina and chatted to the man as they where finishing up with their haul of Brown Crabs (fatter than Maryland blue crabs, brown shells and black tips on their claws) and lobster. He seemed to enjoy it, we'll try to go down a few more times to see what else gets brought in. There's a wide variety of seafood in the Irish sea, other fishing boats were scheduled to bring in scallops etc.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Hurry up and wait already!

A very straightforward drive from Maryland to New Jersey. Took our time, got to the airport in plenty of time.

Airline check-ins. You either love the whole self-check-in process, or you hate it. Me, I hate it. I preferred the whole conversation, where are you going to, did you pack everything yourself, etc etc etc. By taking away the interaction, the airlines have maybe streamlined the process, but they've reduced it to an excercise in herding people.

Moo.

So I'm at the check in screen for incompetent-al airlines, and the show begins:

Enter your destination: Belfast

There is no itinerary for this destination associated with this name.

Bugger, it's beginning early.

OK, so since we are flying THROUGH London, maybe it wants me to put in Heathrow?

Yup, Heathrow is the right answer, the computer says yes, and all five of us are happily checked on to London.

But we aren't going to London. We are going to Belfast.

I then made my first faux-pas, I asked the "assistant" at the check in line (What a wonderfully ironic contradiction, calling the world's most unhelpful person an "assistant")

I explained to her that we are traveliing to Belfast, and that I wanted to know that my bags would be checked through.

Just enter your destination on the screen, she said.

I tried, but it wouldn't take Belfast. It accepted London, I said, so I put that in on the screen.

This triggered some sort of primeval response, maybe she couldn't help herself when she reponded with "That was completely the wrong thing to do".

I on the other hand was fully aware of my reponse of "And that was completely the wrong thing to say, perhaps if there was someone here to ASSIST....."

We got an assistant.

We cleared the security checkpoint (moo again) and grabbed an overpriced and overrated snack at the food court of Newark airport. It's a white. sterile looking location, lots of glass and white panelling.

The flight is not full. We have lots of spaces to spread out, which is really a good thing. The really bad thing is that we sat on the tarmac for three and a half hours prior to taking off. The Captain kept coming on the intercom to tell us it was something to do with the weather, but going by the party that the cabin crew were whooping up in the back galley, I was wondering if they were waiting for pizza delivery or something.

A three hour delay meant that even without taking off, I knew we missed the connecting flight, but since we were waiting for some really nasty weather to blow over, it couldn't be helped. Anyway, the airlines deal with missed connections all the time, right? After all, this is "incompetent-al" airlines! For now however, the kids are having a blast with the individual entertainment screens etc.

T-minus, um, er, not long to go now!

Final preparations are underway, to say the entire family is stoked about this is an understatement!