Remember Dear Reader: The earth is flat and ends at my driveway
By BILL DUNCAN
The Elder Statesman
This could be considered a Halloween story. It is scary enough to qualify.
For those readers of this column, you have long heard my theory that the earth is flat and ends at my driveway. Of this I am convinced, but my wife loves to travel and in our 56 years of marriage she has managed to drag me over the chasm of my driveway to exotic places.
I may have finally convinced her after the nightmare of travel this month on a simple cross-country flight to Florida. I am not talking about going through the Transportation Safety Administration security checks. That part is simple. TSA employees are thorough, respectful, helpful and downright apologetic.
Personally, I feel a lot safer because they are there. The nightmare begins after you have cleared security. That is if my experience is any indication.
My flight was booked out of Portland at 8:30 a.m. with a direct flight to Minneapolis to make connections to a flight to Atlanta and thence to Florida. Suddenly, the flight was canceled. We were rebooked on a flight to Detroit, connecting with a flight to Memphis and thence to Florida. The connections were all there, so not to worry.
Somewhere over South Dakota, a passenger lapsed into a diabetic coma. Fortunately for him there was a doctor on board and two nurses. They managed to stabilize him, but the doctor recommended to the pilot that he land at the nearest airport to get the passenger to a hospital.
The nearest airport? Minneapolis. This diversion put the aircraft late into Detroit and our connections. We spent the night in Detroit, but the next day was uneventful and we arrived in Florida just a day late.
All is well that ends well. We got there, but our luggage didn’t.
It was, you guessed it, in Minneapolis.
The luggage caught up with us a couple days later.
Wonderful visit to Florida. October, without hurricanes of course, is a great month to visit the Sunshine State. The tourists are all gone and the snowbirds haven’t arrived.
After two and a half weeks, however, it was time to return to the great Pacific Northwest. The flight was to leave Florida at 7:30 a.m. to Orlando, thence to Cincinnati thence to Portland. You guessed it.
Flight canceled. Rebooked to Atlanta, thence to Dallas-Forth Worth, thence to Portland.
No problem, we’d still arrive in Portland early afternoon, although the connections in Atlanta were close, but we got to the Dallas-Fort Worth gate with time to spare. We sat with other passengers and waited. The reader board said the flight was on time.
We were lulled into complacency, but like all nightmares that was an illusion.
Without notice, the reader board suddenly flashed a message that the flight was canceled. We were instructed to go to a bank of telephones and dial 1 for a ticket agent. We were rebooked on a later flight to Dallas-Fort Worth and told we were switching airlines there to reach our destination.
Just a minor setback and we got aboard the Dallas flight arriving at Gate D. Our Dallas to Portland flight was at Gate A — just a train ride away. We made it with time to spare, however, the new airline had no information about these two new passengers.
The ticket agent understood our dilemma and worked rapidly to get us on board. However, since we had no boarding pass, we had to go back through security. By this time you must be exhausted with our Halloween story which finally ended in Portland after 17 hours.
The earth is flat and ends at my driveway.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470, or by e-mail at elderstatesmansblog@yahoo.com)