More Adventures In Travel

The time for travel is again upon me. I depart next weekend for sunny Florida for a weekend of fishing, baseball, and drinking. I recently found a few pictures and I am trying to decide if I should consider it some type of warning from a greater power.

Sometime in early summer of last year, an old buddy of mine "The Hammster" and I decided to go fishing in Clearwater. The airfare was cheap from Nashville and we booked a flight for Labor Day weekend.

Mr. Hamm, or "The Hammster" as he is known to his friends, is an interesting travel companion. Alternately full of pessimism and piss and vinegar, you never know in what type of adventures you might find yourself if The Hammster is aboard.

We were to leave the Thursday before Labor Day and naturally as the date drew nigh, a storm was brewing in the Atlantic. This storm later earned a name and Frances caused quite a bit of damage on the East and Gulf coasts of Florida.

Hammster took great pleasure in studying the weather channel and reporting to me daily on the storm's path. He was of the mind that we should be cautious and skip the entire trip. "Bollocks to that" I'd say and remind him that everything was non-refundable.

So off we fly with one eye on the stewardesses and the other on the weather, pounding back those little mini bottles of bourbon you can buy on the flight. We landed in Tampa and were immediately struck by how gorgeous the weather was. Light, feathery clouds, eighty degrees, and not a rain drop in sight.

We spent Thursday and Friday fishing and drinking. Whenever we did make it back to the hotel room, we watched the weather channel and I spent time convincing The Hammster that we would be long gone by the time Frances reached Clearwater.

Friday afternoon, we decided to head over to Busch Gardens, mainly because I was dying to go to an amusement park that served beer. While there, we discovered Beer School. Anheuser-Busch apparently thinks it's a good idea to educate it's consumers on how to properly drink the golden nectar that is beer, and what better place to do it but at an amusement park with many roller coasters to ensure that you get to enjoy the beer more than once.

I, of course, graduated at the top of my class and was awarded my "Beer Master" certificate. Saturday morning we awoke with only mild hangovers and flipped on the T.V. Seems that Frances had picked up quite a bit of steam overnight and was now centered over Miami. I still believed that we would be able to enjoy our entire weekend. We were to leave on Sunday afternoon and my thought was that we would be long gone before the storm hit.

The Hammster mentioned that perhaps it would be prudent to call our airline, Delta, and see if we could possibly get an earlier flight on Sunday. After an hour wait on hold, he was finally able to pose the question to a Delta employee. Said employee then proceeded to tell us that an earlier flight on Sunday was out of the question since Tampa was closing it's airport in a few hours and no flights would be leaving the next day. I began to feel The Hammster's panic from across the room.

"When do you think they will open the airport again? Tuesday? But it's Saturday! It is going to be closed for three days?" And then he went silent. I have know idea what he was being told at this point, but when his eyes rolled backwards into his head so that only the whites were showing, I knew that his brain was in gridlock. I gently took the phone from his hand.

"Ma'am? Is there anyway we can get out before Tuesday?"

"Well, they have begun to post mixed crew flights. Most of them are full, but Northwest has one leaving in forty-five minutes."

I found out later that a mixed crew flight means that airlines are taking planes out of storage and putting any pilot from any airline that they can find on them.

Now Clearwater Beach is easily a thirty minute drive from Tampa, but I did not relish being trapped on what is basically an island for what was now being labeled a category four hurricane.

"Ma'am, we will give it our best effort. Book us on the flight."

We immediately threw our beer stained clothes into our bags and bolted out the door. We made it to the airport with about fifteen minutes to spare, ran to the Northwest ticket counter and qued up in a considerable line. After about five minutes, with the line moving forward at a reasonable pace, The Hammster turned to me and said, "I wonder if we were supposed to check in at the Delta counter first."

Now I knew that I was being set up. If I agreed and we got out of line to check on it, we would miss the flight. If I disagreed and it turned out that the Delta counter was where we needed to be, then we would have wasted our time and missed the flight. Either way, it would be my fault that we missed the flight. So, I turned the question back to The Hamster and said, "Whatever you want to do sport." Normally, the need to make a decision completely fries The Hamster's circuits, but today he immediately said "Let's go to the Delta counter."

We jumped out of line and ran to the other side of the terminal and were immediately stopped in our tracks. The lines at the Delta counter reminded me of the evacuation of Saigon. We were sunk. I approached a Delta employee standing there and explained our situation, hoping that he would send us back to Northwest. He confirmed our fears and said "You have to check in with the trans airline specialist" or some such rubbish. Dejectedly, I asked where this line might be and he told us that it was right behind the large column that was in front of us. We walked toward the column, there was no hurry now since we were sure to miss our flight. Once we rounded the obstruction lo and behold!!! NO LINE. There was a lady patiently waiting for us with nary a customer in sight. We closed the distance with a quickness, explained our situation, which miracle of miracles she grasped instantly. A little computer work, much furious typing and she handed us a set of tickets.

"There you go."

"Umm, ma'am? Where do you want us now?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, you have to go back to the Northwest counter."

We ran. We ran like O.J. from the law. We ran like we owed money to the I.R.S. We ran like there was a hurricane bearing down on us, which of course it was.

The line at Northwest had not abated much and we returned to the end. We only had about five minutes before the flight departed, so I did not hold out much hope for our boarding the plane. Suddenly a young lady stepped out from the counter and asked "Is there anybody who has not checked in for the 12:05 flight to Memphis?" That was us! Our hands shot up, she dragged us to the front of the line, bam, bam, ripped our tickets and sent us to the gate.

Now I like the set up at the Tampa airport. Most airports make you show your ticket and ID at one common point before allowing you into the terminal proper. This causes a huge mass of fliers to bunch up at a single point. Tampa has trams that go to different areas of the terminal and they divide the checkpoints among each tram entrance. We whipped through the checkpoint, boarded the tram, exited into the terminal and got in line for the baggage check and metal detectors. I was beginning to feel a little hope. The line was moving very quickly.

We were next to put our bags through the x-ray when suddenly the security guard dropped her little wand in front of us.

"If the two of you will step out of line please."

Oh fuck! What did we do now? Without a word, we were ushered into another line that was feeding into this contraption that looked like a phone booth with doors on both ends. As we drew closer to the phone booth, I worked up the courage to ask one of the security personnel what was going on in front of us. His eyes lit up and he launched into an explanation.

"It's brand new. We are one of only two facilities that have it. It's being tested here before they install it in all of the airports. It's our new chemical sniffer and will detect minute quantities of materials used to make explosives."

"Ummmm, sir, why were we pulled out of line for this?"

"Oh, it's completely random, you just happened to be in the right place at the right time."

As much as I disagreed with his last comment, I didn't have time to explain my position. It was my turn to enter the phone booth. I walked in as instructed and stood on the little footprints. Suddenly there was a gush of air that made me glad that I decided not to wear my kilt home and then the doors in front of me opened.

I walked out and reached for my bag. Nanoseconds before I reached the handle, the bag was snatched away. I looked up and another official informed me that my bag was to be searched. They took all of my clothes out and swabbed the inside of my bag, ran the swabs through another machine and then informed me that I could go catch my flight. "Fat chance," I thought. Luckily, The Hammster had already undergone the same scrutiny as I and we were both free to run to the gate.

Panting as we approached the gate, my heart fell. There was no plane at the gate, the flight information had been change to reflect an impending departure to Boston, and nobody was in front of the counter. I just knew that we had missed the flight.

Once we got to the counter, I put on my best puppy dog face and began to ask if there was anything to be done.

"Oh," she replied,"Your flight hasn't left yet, they will be bringing up the plane shortly."

A reprieve! We managed to board the plane without incident and as the plane took off the pilot
addressed the passengers over the intercom.

"If you folks will look out the right side of the plane, you will see Frances approaching Tampa. People, you missed the rough stuff by three miles."

We had never seen a drop of rain.

Dear readers, think of me during the coming weekend. Keep an eye on the weather and pray for my safe passage.