My flight from Fresno to Las Vegas was scheduled to leave at 7 am. I planned on an hour to get ready, an hour to drive, and arriving an hour early. A good plan. Unfortunately, a plan with little bearing on reality.
As I have stupidly done before, when I awake early and see that I am "on schedule" I relax into my normal every-day leisurely morning routines: coffee, cereal, reading the news online... and I got out of the shower to see that according to my schedule, I should have been getting into my car!
I was another ten or 15 minutes at least getting dressed, packed [!] and out the door. I set the alarm and locked the house -- and then had to come back in for a flash light as it was completely black out, and I didn't want to slip in mud on the way to the detached garage.
The drive took exactly an hour, as it always does. That is, the drive to Fresno took an hour. It was another ten minutes once off the freeway to get to the airport. Stupidly enough, I had not accounted for that.
I parked, grabbed my bag, and ran to the check-in counter -- where there were three clerks, and nine people in front of me.
I debated whether to loudly say "Excuse me, my flight leaves in 25 minutes! Can I go first?!" [I appreciate it at bigger airports when a clerk walks the line calling out numbers of flights departing soon and moves those people up]. But I said nothing, wimping out.
I started talking to the guy behind me, a tall man in his early 60s.
I noticed a very small sign on the counter: All passengers must be checked in 30 minutes before departure.
Oh crap.
I told the man I was beginning to panic. That sign wasn't there the last time I flew from this small airport, in April.
The line was not moving, as of course two of the clerks had troublesome passengers to deal with at great length... and so everyone else was being helped by the remaining counter person.
I got to counter at 20 minutes till my plane's scheduled departure -- and sure enough, it was too late.
I knew I was *mostly* at fault for getting there later than I'd planned... but I pointed out to the clerk that the sign was not up last time... that when I bought the ticket online there was no such warning/restriction. I pulled out my email confirmation /ticket information print, and showed that nowhere there did it say anything either.
She spoke to me as if was mentally slow, saying that of course all flights require long check in times now. She did not say "9-11," but she spoke with the heavy implication that I was a chowder head for not taking that into consideration. That ticked me off a bit... I pointed out that last time I hadn't had to be that early for a flight from this airport -- that when I flew internationally, as I did just a few months ago, I got to the airport hours early...but this was a 40 minute flight!
She once again just said that it had always been this way.
[The man behind me later said he had flown just four months ago -- and the sign had not been up, and no such hard-and-fast rule was in place.]
As there was not another Fresno-to-Vegas flight until the evening, I was booked through Los Angeles.
And I was charged another $100.
She added that it can take 20 minutes to get through security and down to the gate...
I got through security in one minute. The walk to the gate took two minutes.
I waited 30 minutes for the LA flight. The man I'd spoken with turned out to be on it as well, and we spoke at the gate as we waited. Turns out he is an engineer, specializing in water plans... and he'd had plenty of experience with the slow bureaucracy and political /economical power plays in the two small towns nearest my house.
We got in the 20-seat plane.. and waited for ten minutes. And then the co-pilot came on the radio to say that we couldn't take off as a luggage been would not latch. I was about to suggest my solves-all tool, duck tape... but he said a mechanic was on his way from across the airport. Ten minutes later the mechanic arrived... ten minutes later he left to get the latch part... Eventually we took off.
In LA I got a shuttle bus from one terminal to another.
I had an hour still for my connection, so I took advantage of the complementary shoe shine. I had a good talk with Manuel the shiner; I yammered on about digital cameras and camera-phones and such, as he seemed interested. He laughed as he recalled that he was a passenger when his cousin was in an small car accident, and that afterward the cousin was saying he wished he'd had a camera -- and Manual pointed out to him that he did have one, on his phone.
People will be awhile getting used to camera-phones, but soon enough everyone will have them. It will change photography.
I told him about my projections for ubiquitous security cameras, and that bothered him a bit.
Back at the gate, the flight was delayed an hour as mechanics had to do something. I realized that this trip was cursed.
Whatever it was, they fixed it well enough that the flight itself was uneventful.
I landed at noon. My original flight time had been 8:20.
Thankful that I had no checked luggage [just a change of clothes in a small bag], I rushed out to get a taxi --
-- And saw the longest cab line ever.
It was literally six times as long as any other I'd seen -- as it looped back and forth six times.
I started talking with the couple behind me. While the wife kept count of how long we were waiting, he and I talked about a class action suit against the city for the cab snafu -- he was a lawyer. At the least, I suggested, he should write to the Powers That Be in the city and complain that here he was, a rich gambler, wasting one hour in a cab line in what was supposed to be a modern, efficient city -- an hour when he could have been gambling or shopping. That lack of revenue should make the PTB take notice, and fix the cab situation...
