Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (Part 1)

It takes a lot to get me to leave the house, much less travel. I despise long road trips, I'm either flagged or the TSA hates me for no reason, and airplanes appear to be cursed in my presence.

But every so often, my family convinces me to leave the safe confines of my home to join them on adventures. I never regret the destination. But I always end up regretting the journey. 

Ron, on the other hand, travels frequently for work. He always travels Delta and almost always books his flights through the Columbus Airport. It's the strangest thing. He shows up at the airport, walks through Security, gets on the plane, the plane takes off, and then lands at his next destination without incident. Weird. 

But the one time he talked me into flying to surprise my family in Texas a few years ago, I got thoroughly frisked by Security (it happens ever damn time I fly), then they started announcing at our gate that they were overbooked and needed people to volunteer to get off that flight (I begged him to let us volunteer and he refused), then our plane sat at the gate covered in ice for 2 hours before we finally took off, then we had to frantically run through the Atlanta airport, we missed our connecting flight by 5 minutes, and were told they'd bumped us to the next available flight...8 hours later. 

We're still married because he introduced me to a little thing called 'The Delta Sky Club' where he ordered me a margarita iv drip from the open bar and pointed me toward the vats of bbq ribs and Mac and cheese on their free buffet. If they'd asked for volunteers to get off that next flight, I promise you there would've been no stopping me.

So last year, our family booked a cruise out of New Orleans. Ron asked me if we should drive. No, we should not. "So we'll fly then?" No, I don't wanna do that either.

I've never claimed to be easy to live with.

The deciding factor was when he told me he had enough points for us to fly for free and we could fly out of the Dayton Airport. You see, there was a time when I preferred to fly out of the Dayton Airport because it's smaller, therefore less overwhelming for an introverted homebody and it feels like a shorter drive than to Columbus. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. 

I started dreading that decision when both Zac and Ron experienced 'technical difficulties' trying to fly out of the Dayton Airport for various work trips in the months leading up to ours. Zac's plane got delayed by 3 hours and after getting on the plane, off the plane, back on the plane, and off again without ever leaving the gate, Ron ended up cancelling his trip altogether and came home.

They've come to the conclusion that airlines must send their small crap planes to small crap airports, thus making your entire experience trying to fly out of there a dumpster fire of crap. 

And now I would agree.

The plan was to fly out the morning of the day before our cruise, we'd have over 3 hours layover in Atlanta...helloooo Sky Club, and we'd arrive in New Orleans around dinner time where we'd meet up with Aubrey and Nick who drove down the day before and Kearstin and Trevor who flew down there uneventfully like mythical little travel fairies or something.

We arrived at the airport early that morning and ran into a slight snag at Security when she asked to see my driver's license and I looked at Ron because he's the one who always shows the bartender a picture of my license when I get carded. But he just stood there looking back at me and asked me where my driver's license was, so I explained it's in my purse at home and then everybody stared at me like I'm the one who travels all the time and should know stuff. We had our passports for the cruise, so crisis averted, but then I was thoroughly frisked anyway. (Did I mention this happens every damn time I fly?) Listen, I forgot my driver's license, that doesn't make me a terrorist. 

Caymen was coming through behind me and they asked her if she was with me. She said yes and then they patted her down too and now she says she's never going through airport security with me again. Ron was over in the TSA approved line because he decided a long time ago never to go through airport security with me again because of that one time I packed my Weight Watcher's scale in my carry on and you would've thought I'd tried to bring an explosive devise with me.

When we finally made it through security and arrived at our gate, Ron said "Uh Oh. This is the same gate where all of my technical issues happened last time I tried to fly out of here." 

And that's where we'll leave off for now. Stay tuned next time when we spend the next 10 hours at the cursed gate B12 of the Dayton Airport, they hand out vouchers to try to calm the hostile masses, and the cops are summoned when someone refused to accept that their voucher could not be used on alcoholic beverages at the airport bar. 

You're probably assuming that was me. Ron certainly was when he heard the situation announced over the intercom and bolted out of the gift shop to make sure I was still sitting in my chair at the gate where he left me. 

To be continued...