traveling

Music: The Orb and David Gilmour: Metallic Spheres (2010) I am a nervous traveler. I always have been, since the first time I flew to South Carolina and back in an hour-long trip as a Cub Scout (I remember a giddy childlike fascination overcoming the fantasy of crashing). Frequent flying over the past decade has produced countless magazine subscriptions but rarely a ticket worth the trouble.

I was on my first job hunt in the fall of 2001. After September 11th I flew 27 times over the following four months. That is when my nervous traveling became an aversion, the beginning of my drink-to-fly policy, and also the year when I started romancing the train. (My romance with the train is over, by the way.)

Any romance I had left since Nine-eleven in regard to flying died today (as did, perhaps, some hopes and at least one fear). E! and I arrived at the airport together, somewhat fiendishly early, and happily our flights on two different airlines were leaving from the same terminal. We vowed to meet-up after security for a little visiting before we would fly to our different destinations.

I arrive at the kiosk at American Airlines, banged in my destination city and received an odd message: "Unable to process your request at this time. Take this information ticket to an agent." There was an agent close by, so I showed her my ticket. "Are you going to Austin?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am."

"I think your flight it delayed." The zipper on the side of her red skirt was busted and held together from behind with a safety pen.

"That's not good, since I have a tight connection at LAX."

The agent led me to stand in line at ticketing. There were two people ahead of me. There was one agent at ticketing, a woman in her late sixties or early seventies with heavily dyed, short-cropped hair and glasses from the 90s with neck-chain. She was speaking with a very tall, thin African man who was not happy. There was a problem.

A ten minute problem.

When the problem became a twenty-minute problem, I decided to call AA customer service. Meanwhile, the women in front of me in line gave up and left. The man next in line said actually it was a 45 minute problem, that he had been waiting quite a while. "I can't believe there is only one agent!" I said, but with an f-word in there somewhere.

The line behind us grew to fifteen people (I counted).

I finally got to a human on customer service, who could not find my reservation. Then, she found my reservation, but noted everything appeared to be on time. She would transfer me to someone who could help.

The 20-minute/40 minute problem became a 30-minute/50-minute problem. The man experiencing the 50-minute problem was called up next. The tired women agent smiled and processed him rather quickly. On the phone, I learned the person I was transferred to could only assist with web based issues, and because I was actually at the airport she could not help me. She was sorry.

"Can you transfer me back to the first person?"

"I'm sorry, I cannot. You'll need to call reservations again, or wait for an agent at the airport. I'm so sorry Mr. Gunn. I know it's got to be frustrating."

E! has been calling and texting. "Are you coming this way? Where are you?" I call her back to say she may have to kiss the for me, as I may be delayed.

Finally, the man is in front of me is processed and it is my turn.

I move to approach the counter. The aged agent looks up briefly at me with a scowl and steely stare. Her lips are pursed and wrinkled, like opening of a brown paper bag twisted about the neck of a mediocre pinot noir Boone's Farm. She extends her index finger in front of her nose to halt my approach, and then shakes her head from side to side, as if to say "no you don't!" My jaw dropped. I have been reduced to something inhuman and unworthy of human speech, any explanation. The woman behind me in a hot pink shirt laughed as I stared at her incredulously.

The agent grabbed her purse and, without as much as a grunt, promptly left.

My flight was about to board, I had yet to go through security, I had no boarding pass, I had waited 45 minutes, there were fifteen people behind me in line, and the agent just simply left.

Hot-pink-shirted lady exclaimed in a think Austrailian accent, "unbelieveable!"

"That really did just happen," I said. "Maybe we're on a television gotcha show, like Candid Camera?

"No. fucking. way." said an Asian man at the end of the line (others in the line didn't seem to be noticing the drama unfolding).

I throw up my hands and give the Grand Hailing Sign of Distress in the direction of the check-in kiosks, hoping someone will notice me. Ok, well, really, a modified version---not the real thing. Actually, the GHSD I gave looked something like my best impression of an Italian mobster doing an upper-body interpretive dance of the phrase, "what the fuck is going on here?" An agent noticed me and began speaking to a short luggage handler, who shook her head. The noticing agent then approached a blonde-headed woman who similarly expressed negative feelings about assisting with the growing line in ticketing.

Finally, a third behind-the-counter person gestured to help me down at the self-service area. "Hmm." Clickity-click-click-clack he went with hands that had been badly burned in a former life.

"Interesting." A cherub faced co-worked leaned over his shoulder as they booth peered at a screen shielded from the customer's view. "You have been flagged and locked out of the system. Someone has a name very close to yours, it's off by one letter. The system thought you were trying to check in twice. We'll take care of it."

"Thank you," I said. "But I don't think I've ever been treated quite as rudely as your colleague did---she just left us all there, after I had been waiting 45 minutes."

I waited for the apology. It never came.

I had about seven minutes with E! before I shot down a bourbon and boarded the plane.

Now, I await the rest of my adventuresome life in the soulful, green-walled embrace of the Los Angeles airport Chili's, where I have forgone my baby-back ribs for a Cobb salad with grilled---as opposed to fried---chicken. My flight, of course, has been delayed. It smells of dried beer and Clorox; if the electricity was suddenly stolen by the Hamburgler, we would all survive the the glow of our smart phones.

And I have bronchitis.