Learning to Fly, Part 1

The Bitchening

A few weeks ago, my partner and I¹ were hired to pre-buy and ferry an airplane from Phoenix to Baltimore. These job logistics are always complex and time consuming. Every extra step in a process is another opportunity for slippage; when a delay materializes at every possible step it’s an omen that the next 24 hours are going to be an epic of frustration and unpleasantness.

Getting to the airport

If you’ve never travelled commercial air with a view to performing actual physical work at your destination, you probably don’t appreciate how suspicious a set of screwdrivers looks when TSA x-rays your luggage. I have a story about transporting a newly fabricated exhaust pipe and a replacement cylinder for my Luscombe in checked luggage from Baltimore to Pasco, WA -- but that’s another post. This time we were overburdened with combination wrenches and Leatherman multi-tools that couldn’t travel carry-on. Otherwise everything we needed to transport would be in carry-on. This will come back to haunt us later.

TSA

It was at this point about 19:30 local and the airport was still quite busy, but there was only one TSA line open for the entire terminal. I have never completely reconciled myself to the post 9-11 indignities of airport “security.” The pointless commands to remove my shoes, submit my shampoo and Diet Mountain Dew for visual inspection, and segregate my electronics according to some taxonomy that changes every time I fly, are not rational hazard mitigation. They are cultic rituals. Nevertheless, I try to comply as smoothly as possible. It becomes apparent that my latest cyborg implant – a titanium plate and pins installed to stabilize a complex wrist fracture a couple of months ago – is going to be an ongoing problem. I get waved aside for a pat-down, extreme side-eye, and a 10-minute delay. At this point my demurral of fetching fried chicken from the Royal Farms where we met up with -- and were delayed by -- the buyer handing off the paperwork begins to haunt me. We’re not going to get any food. Goddammit.

The gate

We are assigned to a gate at the very ass end of Terminal B. We propel our decrepit middle-aged bodies towards this target with no concern for possible cardiac damage. We might have traumatized a young family on the moving walkway. We get there just as boarding starts. Because it’s Southwest and I’m too cheap to pay for a boarding upgrade we’re in group C. So we both aren’t going to board soon and have no time to sprint back to anywhere that food or drink can be had. We stand around, lamely, and silently curse our lack of foresight, even though getting Royal Farms fried chicken through TSA might have required a Jack Ryan security clearance.

The wait on the ramp

After being herded onto the plane, scolded about excessive overhead bin luggage (Jack and I are innocent here – everything we carry fits under the seat) and hearing the skyway door close….we sit. And sit. Eventually we are released from the terminal, taxi, and launch, 54 minutes after scheduled departure. This is this kind of delay that should be explained to passengers, but the only reason given (baggage loading took too long) sounds suspicious and lame. I ferret out the real story 12 hours later.

The baggage claim

We arrive at PHX a full hour after the published arrival time. We are exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. During this six hour ordeal (five hours in air plus an hour waiting on the ground at BWI) we have been given one pack of crackers, one pack of chocolate, and 6 oz of Diet Coke. But the fun is just beginning. We think we are a few minutes away from claiming our luggage, hiking to the rental car lot, and blasting off to our hotel. It’s now 00:45 local time. Our hopes are soon flaming on the ground.

There are eight baggage claim areas at PHX. During the next 90 minutes baggage arrivals are announced going to…Claim 8…no, strike that, Claim 4…eventually there are reports of baggage from a single flight being directed to two or more claim areas. However chaotic the passenger baggage area looks, it’s got to be ten times worse on the other end of the conveyor belt.

Triangulating from what we see in the baggage area, what we were told in-flight, and what we can gather from online resources, we start to get a picture of what was really happening in the airspace we just crossed. A volatile weather system blew from California to about Des Moines, disrupting travel west to east. Hundreds of flights were delayed, diverted, or cancelled. Finally at 01:45 local our bags appear. As do those of about 60 flights that have been diverted to PHX with no warning. We’re about to collide with hundreds of unprepared passengers who have been dumped at PHX through no fault of their own. We’re all going to be unhappy.

The rental car debacle

I am a Hertz Gold Plus member. This is supposed to afford me the opportunity to go straight to the rental lot, choose a car from my approved section, get in, and drive away.

At PHX just getting to the rental car area involves a long hike through the terminal and a longer train ride. But we survive that and fire up the phone app that is supposed to allow me to work the Gold Plus magic.

No such luck.

The lot from which I am supposed to choose my car is ill marked; it’s not at all obvious what I’m looking at or where I’m supposed to go. When I finally do figure that out, there are 250 spots and 3 cars. All of which have chalked on the window: No Key.

There is a Hertz office tucked in the back of this parking area. At the time I arrive, after trying for 30 minutes to figure out how to use this broken app to get into my reserved car, there are 50-60 people already in line. In a parking garage, open to the winds and weather. I spend the next two hours standing in this line. In a parking garage. It’s 40°F and winds I’d guess 10-15kt. When, at the end of two hours, I finally get to the front of the line, the Hertz representative apologizes for my wait and comps me whatever vehicle I want from the “Ultimate” lot. Thanks, buddy. If I’d wanted a 3-row SUV I’d have reserved one. Giving me one now does nothing to mitigate the fact that you promised me a 2-door subcompact two hours ago and didn’t deliver.

It’s now 4:15 am local. You might think a happy ending is in view. You would be wrong.

24 hour chow

The rental car might not be just what I was waiting for, but it did have Apple Car Play installed. So the minute I get the keys I plug in my phone and search for 24 hour food. In the past 24 hours I’ve had a couple of slices of toast, an apple, a packet of crackers, and a diet Coke. I am insane, lightheaded, and ravenous. And because I used to live in Texas, I want Jack in the Box. Google Maps locates a 24-hour Jack in the Box. Off we go.

When we get there, we find a couple of cars in the parking lot, all the doors locked, and the drive through blocked off with traffic cones. Banging on the doors gets no response, other than rousting the four homeless people camped out by the dumpster. I have a momentary breakdown in the parking lot, declaring “I am done” and “Please just shoot me now.” Jack refuses to honor my request, and instead of ritual suicide we find a McDonald’s.

Although what I really want at this point is a sack full of Big Macs, at this point it is officially morning and I have to order from the breakfast menu. I get a bacon egg McWaffle or whatever the hell it’s called. I take oblique bites from this disk of despair as I navigate towards our oasis, our final resting place, our booked and paid for hotel.

The hotel

Except, apparently, even after you pay for a hotel, and phone them and tell them you’re arriving late, it isn’t *your hotel room.* There arrives a moment when the hotel clerk has to “clear the books” and they cancel your reservation, charge you a no-show fee, and abjure all responsibility to house you when you finally do show up.

And so we found ourselves at 05:15 local. The sun was beginning to crest the horizon; we were psychotic with sleep deprivation, hunger, and dehydration – and the hotel clerk was blandly informing us that the reservation we’d made and paid for three days ago was null and void. So sorry. I might be able to fix it, but I need to run my TPS reports first. Hold on for 45 minutes or so. I parked my ass on a sofa in the lobby and did my Hoosier Boomer version of dramatic neurosis, which is to stare at the horizon and sigh in a marked manner. If only the lobby had provided some coffee and a sad display of packaged pastries I might have feigned cheer, but no…three plus years after the bat flu escaped a Wuhan lab, a hotel in suburban Phoenix was still claiming that they couldn’t give me a cellophane-wrapped bear claw because COVID.

This is the moment when I finally fully admitted, after denying all the signals that had been presented to me since early spring 2020…this country is broken. No one “in charge” has a single fracking clue. The entire bureaucratic apparatus engineered to direct the operation of our technocratic, post industrial wasteland is not only useless, but malevolent.

Every unpalatable dish we’d been served from this 24-hour menu of woe was cooked by faceless functionaries who think they can run the world and the people in it through websites and phone apps and layers of bureaucratic adherence to corporate policies and government dictates. And the pressure to put more and more of our daily lives under the control of these credentialed nincompoops grows steadily.

Tune in for Chapter Two, in which I detail the delicious counterpoint to this.

1. “Partner” is dumb but since we are both past 60 “boyfriend” is even dumber. We are business associates, romantic companions, and un-indicted co-conspirators in an ongoing crusade to bear-bait the FAA. He has not given his permission to be flogged in my Substack, so I’ll call him “Jack.”