Getting on the wrong airplane

I fully intended to start working my way through the list of post-move topics,
and I will eventually get to that stuff.

But at this very moment, my attention is occupied by a little problem I’ve
discovered I have. I didn’t realize it until after getting settled in my
hotel room tonight but I now believe I got onto the wrong airplane today.
I’ve seen other people do it before, but usually they realize the problem
before they arrive. It took me much longer.

I left Houston, Texas intending to go to Fayetteville, North Carolina. I made
my connection in Charlotte and the sign at the gate said Fayetteville. I’ve
since discovered I’m actually in hell. The weird thing is, it’s not hot here
in hell, though it was rather smoky at the airport. I should have figured it
out when I started to smell the smoke before we even landed.

Since arriving in hell, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t really want
to be here long term. For starters, they can’t seem to get the baggage here
with the people. And it’s not just me. I was #3 in a line of.. I think more
people than there were on the airplane. None of us had our bags. Apparantly
baggage is not allowed in hell.

But, undeterred by the first signs of being in the least desirable place in
the universe, I made my lost bag claim and headed to the hotel, which is also
conveniently located in hell.

The town of hell is not particularly attractive but the hotel sure looks
nice… from the outside. Like any good deception (as hell would certainly
be), the lobby didn’t even look half bad. In fact, I was thinking to myself
how nice the wood finish and granite countertops were at the checkin counter.
But it’s all a facade. The room is large, which simply means it has more
dirty carpet in it. But at least the bathroom is, well, I’ve been in
worse… once. This one time in Malabo, Equitorial Guinea… yeah, go look
that up on a map. Let’s just say, I’m impressed that there’s no toxic waste
dripping from the ceilings onto the toilet seat (yet). On the other hand, by
the smell of things, there probably was recently.

So I decided I could escape the reality of my layover in hell by logging on to
the internet. But, you see, the internet is actually a part of heaven, so
connecting to it from hell is difficult at best. There are no high speed
internet connections in hell (try to find a t-mobile hotspot within a million
miles of 28304 and you’ll see). The desk clerk did say they have a
hospitality lounge with high speed internet access especially for priorty
club members (who knew my priorty club card would work in hell!). Alas, the
desk clerk apparently doesn’t even know what high speed internet access is.
In fact, I’m not sure the desk clerk knows what high speed anything is.

The local calls are free in hell, but you get what you pay for. That is, only
after you pay for it. But wait, they’re free and you have to pay for them?
Yes, remember, this is hell we’re talking about. After walking nine miles to
my hotel room, I discovered I couldn’t dial out. I called the Holiday Inn
Hell receptionist who informed me I had to put down a deposit to make local
calls. I made an attempt to persuade her to turn the phone on without making
me walk eighteen miles round trip to the desk. She insisted I bring her
something, despite my charming effort, which I did, only after waiting in
line for several hours while the lost-bag guy delivered everyone else’s lost
bags but mine.

I figured since I had her attention (finally), I’d ask her if there was
anything fun to do in hell, since I was going to be stuck here for a couple
of days. “Fun? What do you mean fun?” No, I’m not kidding, that’s actually
what she said. After describing certain things that could be fun to some
people, she pointed me to the bar, which she made sound one click better than
a padded cell.

Well, okay, she tried to point me to the bar. I begged her to show me a
shorter way, though. Given her directions, I was confident I wouldn’t be
able to figure out how to get back to my room from the bar even if I hadn’t
had a thing to drink and had a map, GPS and a popcorn trail. And if I did,
miraculously, find my room, it wouldn’t be until the end of next week, and I
would have missed my flight and be in need of triple bypass surgery. She
tried to describe a shortcut to me. It might not have been shorter, but at
least it was confusing. I’m convinced now that there’s actually no bar in
hell, just a room with a piece of cheese and a whole bunch of tired, confused
alcoholics.

So I just hiked back to my room. My dialup ISP is fantastic, you know. I
expect the best, and they come through for me. They have no less than 6
access numbers here in hell. The only problem is, the ones that aren’t
disconnected don’t really work (I tried them all… several times). I think
the phone wiring in this hotel was installed during the civil war. The modem
makes all kinds of cool sounds I’ve never heard it make before. Sometimes
they result in a connection of roughly 6 bits per century. And, of course,
after being connected barely long enough to get a DNS reply, the thing hangs
up.

So now I’m not sure what to do for the next day and a half. I’m sure it’ll go
by quickly with all the phone calls to USAirways trying to determine when my
bag is going to show up.