travel mania

I went to New Haven this weekend to visit my husband (he's on sabbatical there for the semester), and the night before I left, I had a bad feeling about my flights.  I couldn't check in online, the website cited "changes to my itinerary".  So I got to the airport at 5:45am, when I should have checked in for my flights from MSP to Philly to New Haven, only to find I couldn't because "my flight has been cancelled" according to the screen.  Crap!  Ok, well only the Philly - New Haven leg was cancelled apparently due to the impending snowpocalypse on the east coast...which is curious seeing as it wasn't even supposed to hit that far north...but whatever...it was cancelled.  So, okay, I had them reroute me to Boston knowing I could take the train from Boston to New Haven with relative ease (plus I really love a train ride, so secretly I was a little excited by this).  But then we had to de-ice in Mpls, so we were 45 minutes late leaving...I only had an hour layover in Philly...you do the math.  I was convinced I was going to miss my connection and that the universe was conspiring against me seeing my husband for the weekend.  How was the Philly airport you ask?  A blur.  I sprinted the length of the terminal over to the next one and was a hot mess boarding my flight with minutes to spare.

I think airport workers must recognize that glazed look people who are about to miss flights get. This panicky, focused energy that narrows you to tunnel vision on the all important task of finding the best path through the throng of painfully slow moving people...and even the ones moving at a pretty good clip are in your way.

I was flying back to visit my family in Calgary a couple years ago and flew through Toronto...landing late and having to pick up my bag, clear customs (which is notoriously slow in TO), get over to the domestic terminal, clear security, then get to my gate at the farthest end of the terminal all in 45 min.  Impossible you say?  No, but definitely not pleasant. Again, I ran.  Got to security and forgot to take my belt off, so set off the dectector.    The TSA agent realized I was late and instead of making me take off the belt and go through again, just asked me to open up the belt buckle.  In my glazed, panicky, tunnel vision state I misunderstood, and undid way more than just the belt buckle.  The security line got a nice look at my panties...

And to top it all off, as I ran to my gate, I somehow managed to drop my boarding pass along the way...