I Am Completely Serious

Next day I wake up to discover the weather in San Fran has actually gotten worse. The power in my hotel is out, and the airport is actually closed. Ever the optimist, I pack my bags, check out of my hotel, and go down to the airport anyway to wait. It's open, but there's no mention of my flight anywhere on the boards. I find a random gate and wait some more.

Eventually the announcement comes up, after much hemming and hawing -- the flight is confirmed, and it will be leaving at 2 PM, only 2 hours delayed. I am delighted! I wait some more.

At 3 PM, we start boarding. By 3:30 we're finished boarding, but still sitting at the gate. At 4 PM, they announce that there's some kind of fuckup with the bags, so we sit at the gate some more. At 5 PM, we taxi out to the runway... oh joy! Only to discover that some non-vital system has failed, so they'll need to get back to the gate to have it disabled... except that there are no gates open.

We taxi around some more, and finally pull into a gate, to sit and wait for the maintenance crew. It's now 6 PM, and the pilot pages us to let us know that, regretfully, he is no longer legal to fly. Starting a 12 hour flight now will put him over his legal hours for the day. He asks around to see if there's some other pilot that can take the plane. There is none. So the flight is cancelled, and we all get off.

After standing in line for another 80 minutes, at an average of 20 minutes per customer server -- I was fourth in line -- I get up to the desk to be rebooked. There are now 200 people waiting on standby for Saturday's flight, and Sunday's, and Monday's, all of which were already overbooked. The best they can hope for is a flight to Osaka on Tuesday.

At this point I mention that I don't really insist on Osaka, I can go to Narita or Nagoya; no matter where I land it'll be about a 5 hour commute by train to where I have to go, anyway. And on the map, at least, Nagoya is actually closer to Toyama. This turns out to be the magic words, because they are able to book me for Saturday's flight to Nagoya.

Saturday morning I arrive at SFO bright and early, at 7:30 for a 11 AM flight, determined not to let this one get away from me. Much to my surprise, there's already a line at the counter... which doesn't even open until 8:30 AM.

More waiting. At 8:30 AM there are a couple hundred people waiting... and out comes a single guy, to open a single desk, where he proceeds to take -- I kid you not -- half an hour to deal with the first customer in line.

At 10 AM a guy comes out and asks everyone from the Nagoya flight to come forward. I start to move, and he tells me to stay where I am because I'm only 5th in line. I say, WTF, I've been 5th in line for twenty minutes now. At this average of 20 minutes per customer, the flight will have taken off before I'm checked in. He relents and I FINALLY get checked in for the Nagoya flight.

The flight is boarded and baggaged exactly on schedule... and we proceed to sit on the runway for two hours due to weather conditions, by which time I am hysterically convinced that the pilot is going to keel over dead in his seat, that the flight will be cancelled, that I am going to be stuck in SFO airport forever and get fired from my job. And then we took off.

All would be well, except that landing at 5 PM in Nagoya, I'm cutting perilously close to the time where all the trains to Toyama will have left and I'll have to stay overnight in Nagoya. This complicated by the fact that defying all logic and expectation, Nagoya airport is not connected to the JR system.

Fortunately I was able to make it to the JR station in time to catch the last train of the night. I got to Toyama station too late to take the local train to my house, but by that time I said fuck it, and spent the last of my money on a taxi. Arrived at my house precisely 75 hours after leaving Seattle. And here I sit.