Seven and a half hours

I spend the last day of my trip feeling like Merhan Karimi Nasseri the man living in the terminal at Charles DeGaulle Airport. Why, you ask. Because I was in Terminal B of Reagan National Airport for seven and half hours! Yes, Tom Hanks will be playing me in the movie version of my day. The first delay occurred between when my friends checked in and when I did. Their boarding pass read the scheduled 2:15 departure. My boarding pass said 2:40. This was merely foreshadowing of how the entire day was spent. The delays occurred 20-40 minutes at a time. They’d say we were leaving at 3:10 and then they’d say, “Oh, there’s been a change and we’ll be leaving at 3:35.” “Excuse me, passengers of flight 1809; you will now be departing at 4:01.” And it went on and on and on like this for seven and a half hours! The official reason given by the ground crew was that there was a problem with “traffic patterns.” To me that sounds a lot like, “The dog ate my homework.”

One would think that a large airport like Reagan National would have many ways for the weary traveler to entertain oneself. This would be a very wrong thought. If you want to eat junk food or shop for crap that you don’t need, then Reagan National is the airport for you. If you hate air conditioning and want to sweat for seven and a half hours because the a/c is broken, then Reagan National is the airport for you. But, if you’d like internet access, comfortable chairs, a massage, a pedicure, or perhaps to watch a movie, steer clear of Reagan National.

What we discovered during these seven and a half hours was that there are many stages of anger. First is rage, followed by melancholy. Then one has feeling of apathy. The last stage of anger is delirium. We were through all four stages after about 5 hours.

Eventually, however, a mere thirteen and a half hours after leaving the hotel, I set foot in my own home. The clock read 12:30 a.m. It would have been about an hour and a half shorter to drive home from D.C.

There are many possible other traveling adventures on the horizon although none are definite yet. They include:

Denver, CO – July, 2008
Nashville, TN – September, 2008
Los Angeles, CA – October, 2008
Mexico – December, 2008