Drift Reality

After my last experience with Delta about three months ago, I swore to myself I would never again fly with them but sure enough, a few months later I found myself booking a flight last-minute and being lured in by their cheap rates. As George Bush once once quipped, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.”

I got fooled again by the carrier I can say with 100% confidence is the absolute worst airline in the industry.

A sunny day in San Francisco

The trip started innocently enough with me at SFO on a beautiful, sunny Thursday waiting for my flight to take off. I had a ninety minute layover in Minneapolis before taking the connection through to Dulles and thought I was in for a relatively leisurely day of flying.

I should have known better. Ten minutes before the flight was scheduled to board, Delta gets on the PA and announces that mysterious weather issues are causing delays in Minneapolis. I immediately find this interesting because the weather report doesn’t seem to indicate anything serious in the area. I also find this interesting because the last time I got stranded (in Atlanta) Delta also used “weather” as an excuse when there were no significant weather patterns to speak of.

After about forty minutes we finally board and I am still confident I will make my connection because I have about fifty minutes of leeway. It’s then that I realize two things: first, that the engines aren’t turning on and second, that it is very, very hot on the plane.

“Sorry about the heat guys,” says the airline stewardess on the speaker. She then proceeds to give some excuse about the “pressurizer” not working properly and recommends we close the windows so the sun doesn’t heat things up any more than they already are.

We sit on the tarmac for another twenty minutes and I can start to hear the clock ticking on the departure time for my next flight. I get up and walk to the back of the airplane.

“Excuse me, can you guys tell me what is going on?” I ask politely.

“Yeah, they need to get an auxiliary engine to start the plane,” says the stewardess.

“The plane isn’t starting?”

“Yeah, they need to get an auxiliary over here to start the plane.”

“So they need to jump start the plane?” I ask.

The stewardess looks at me for a moment before responding, “Yeah, I think something like that.”

I say thank you and go back to my seat, wondering if someone outside of the airplane is attaching jumper cables to the plane’s engine at that point in time.

After another fifteen minutes, the air conditioning finally turns back on and the plane starts.  I get back to my seat and we take off.  As the pilot apologizes I feel a sense of resignation that I will most likely be sleeping in Minneapolis that evening.

Adventures in Minneapolis

We land about ten minutes before my flight to DC is scheduled to leave and I feel a slight sliver of hope that I’ll be able to make it.

That hope is dashed when we dock and the pilot apologized again, this time because there is no Delta attendant in the airport around to activate the entrance.  We stand around for another ten minutes while they find someone who can activate the entrance door.

The moment the door opens there is a mad dash into the airport as passengers try to make their connections and I make my way to a service desk to see if there is any possible way I can make my connection.  I ask one of the support staff if she can help me.

“Well, let’s see,” she says and she starts typing away calmly.  “Hmm…the flight to Dulles has left already but there is another flight going to National and if you run over to the gate you may catch it.”

“Really,” I ask, hope again entering in my heart.  “Can you put me on that flight?”

“Well, I really have to get ready for an incoming flight but why don’t you check over at the gate,” she responds dismissively.

Like an idiot, I start sprinting through the ridiculously large Minneapolis airport to try and make the flight without it ever occurring to me that the support attendant knew I didn’t have a chance and just wanted to get rid of me.

This reality dawns on me when I arrive at the gate and see that there are fifteen people crowded around the desk.  I arrive just in time to hear the Delta support agent working the desk announce, “That’s it folks.”

The next four hours involved the following:

• Two customer support agents telling me they can’t help me and I should go to a different desk.
• Finally finding someone who can help me who gives me a $6.00 meal voucher which just about covers the Diet Coke I order with dinner.
• Being hung up on by a Delta support rep. after insisting I get to choose the hotel where I stay.
• Spending two hours waiting to retrieve my bag.
• Staying at the Radisson Hotel Bloomington.
• Getting to DC approximately twelve hours after my itinerary originally stated for no other reason than Delta incompetence.

This time I mean it - I am never going to fly Delta again and I beg you to do the same.  Don’t be lured in by their prices.  They have a ticket surplus for a reason - because people who want to actually get to their destination don’t fly Delta.

Let me preface this entry by saying my brain is completely sun-drenched and I am writing on a sticky keyboard (it took me about four changes of computer at this PC room to find one that was at least semi-suitable) so if any of this is poorly written, well, you get the picture.

George finally arrived in Rio around 6:30 or so on Saturday after also experiencing flight issues. I had called some friends of friends earlier in the day and we agreed to meet at 9AM at our hotel so we had a couple of hours to grab dinner before we headed out for the evening.

We strolled around Copacabana until we came upon a decent-looking churrascaria and headed in. For a set price (of about 50 real) we enjoyed a delicious buffet that contained fresh vegetables, sushi, and fruits, and a barrage of brazilian barbecue that seemed endless. We even tried chicken hearts, which is something I’m glad I did but probably won’t soon be doing again.

After we were nice and stuffed we headed back to the Astoria bar and had a few Skols (a local beer) while waiting for our friends to arrive, which they did promptly at 9PM.

Three guys dropped by the Astoria and although I had never met them personally (they were only friends of one of my close friends in the States) we instantly clicked. Their English was actually pretty solid and we connected over a couple bottles of Skol before heading out the door.

After picking up another car and a few more people, we drove up to Lapa, a neighborhood closer to downtown Rio. The area was absolutely congested with people and traffic and it took around thirty minutes or so to wade our way through the mass of cars and people to a parking space near our destination.

I didn’t know what to expect heading into Rio Scenarium but immediately felt comfortable when we walked in. The entire ambiance of the club was fun and laid back. The design and layout of the venue created the distinct impression that one was walking into a large house party - for those familiar with DC, it felt much more like Science Club than a place like Ibiza.

As we walked in the door they handed us drink cards that the bartenders would later mark-up as they served us drinks. At the end of the night, you handed the drink card to a cashier who then tabulated your bill for the evening. The method definitely facilitated a smoother experience at the bar.

Inside, we walked up three flights of stairs. Each level contained a dance floor, several bars, and lounge areas where patrons could sit and talk. By that point our group had grown to about seven or eight so we walked through the crowd and found an open space by a bar on the third floor where we stayed for the majority of the evening.

Although I didn’t really do much socializing outside of our group (there is a definite language barrier in Brazil) the night was an absolute thrill and I got to connect with our extremely warm and gracious hosts. The crowd itself was unassuming and clearly there for no other reason than to have a good time. I don’t think there was one dirty look in the entire venue nor any sense of pretension. Even though the crowd was packed there was no problems wading through the crowd and from what I could tell there wasn’t much of a sleaze factor either.

At about 4 in the morning we cleared our respective bills and headed home, drunk and happy from the evening’s festivities.

I left Dulles on time at 5:30 PM yesterday.  I sat next to an older Indian gentleman who had his elbows pushed out and immediately realized I would have a worthy adversary to compete with for control of the shared arm rest.  By the time I sat down he had already taken control of the back half of the arm rest so I responded by taking control of the front half, making sure my elbow was leaning over the side an inch (just as his was). 

As we took off I made sure to twitch my biceps every now and again, hoping that the movement would annoy him into giving up control of his half of the arm rest but the tactic didn’t work.  Finally, after we reached cruising altitude he reached down for his laptop and I took the opportunity to take control of the back half of the arm rest, a position I kept for the remainder of the flight.

So the good news is that I had complete control of the superior back half of the arm rest and remain undefeated over my last 100 flights.  The bad news is that I was so preoccupied with the arm rest that I left my notebook (with all relevant travel information) in the seat front pocket. 

Unfortunately I didn’t realize that I had left my notebook in the seat pocket until I sat down on the second flight (from Atlanta to Rio) and realized it was no longer sitting in my bag.  Cursing myself, I sat and thought about how my plans to write throughout the nine our flight were now void because I was so preoccupied with the arm rest I had left my notebook on the plane.  I took out one of the books I had brought, The Gift and began reading the jacket. 

I quickly realized that A) The author makes no bones about his belief in the healing power of Christianity; B) that the story centers around Christmas; and C) the book starts out with a quote from the Bible.  Now, I have nothing against Christianity mind you - I just tend to be a secular reader…so I promptly took my pen out and started writing my own stuff in the blank pages of the book.  I guess it did end up being a Gift after all.

Anyway, after about 15 minutes of writing the pilot began to prepare for takeoff only to realize that the engine wasn’t powering on.  After having a mechanic come out and fiddle with the engine for a bit they summarily decided that the plane wasn’t in condition to make the >5K mile flight and they deboarded us after an hour on the tarmac.  I actually didn’t really feel upset - in fact I think I would have felt more nervous had they decided to move forward with the flight after fixing a faulty engine.

They found a replacement plane and pushed the departure time to 11:55 AM, which I actually didn’t mind because it provided me with an opportunity to rush back to my arrival gate in Atlanta airport and see if I could track down my notebook.  Not surprisingly, I wasn’t able to locate it and trudged back to the departure gate, feeling defeated - a feeling that a quarter pounder from McDonalds helped alleviate slightly.

I quickly got a phone call from George and learned that he was experiencing similar difficulties (his plane was also experiencing mechanical failures) and that he might not even make it out that evening.  Score one for the US aviation industry.  We finally got off the ground at about 11:40 PM and after thanks to the wonders of ambien (score one for the US pharmaceutical industry) I basically woke up at 9:30 AM (Brazilian time), one hour away from Rio.  We landed and I made my way through customs without any problems. 

After a quick bus ride through Rio I arrived at the Hotel Astoria Palace in one piece.  After a quick walk around Copacabana (quick because it is raining and chilly) I grabbed a steak panini at a nearby restaurant and then did some cardio in the hotel fitness center while watching Van Helsing dubbed over in Portuguese. 

I decided to head to a nearby PC cafe to write and tell everyone I arrived fine and in the elevator met an absolute bear of a man with red hair who reminded me of Mel Gibson’s right-hand man from Braveheart.  We chatted briefly while walking down the Avenue Atlantica.  As we walked he told me about how to get over to the football game without paying tourist prices (apparently they mark everything up if you book through the hotel) and then went into exhaustive detail about the brothels here despite my insistence that I wasn’t interested.  It turns out he was actually walking to one at that point in time and we stopped and chatted outside his brothel for a few minutes before I headed here to the PC room to write to you guys!

Anyway, George should be here any second now and I am going to call some of Spencer’s friends to see if they are doing anything tonight.  I’ll write more soon!