Beaker Chronicles

July 31, 2008

Consummate travelers probably already know things that I have to keep teaching myself, like how to recognize bad ideas and bad omens.

The fundamentals of a good trip evidently do not include going out to the Astoria Beer Garden the night before a 7:50 a.m. flight and then sitting drunkenly in a Greek restaurant eating spicy feta dip while an overweight woman analyzes why her overweight boyfriend wants to move to a certain neighborhood in Queens (answer: Your cousin lives next door!).

I guess I have learned this now, though the trip didn’t seem real to me on Wednesday night, despite how much preparation it took, the frantic writing of four stories in one day for the paper. It didn’t strike me how bad an idea that little beer garden jaunt was until we were back at the apartment at midnight and Valerie was exasperated at how much time we had wasted.

Neither of us had packed. Neither had we cleaned the apartment like we had planned in order to deter the rodent invasion. It seems every time we get ready to take a trip, a mouse shows up. It was no different this time. On Tuesday, after four months without a trace of mice, I heard the little bastard rummaging around for the carbonized rice grains that fall under the burners of the stove. I threw the stove lid open and saw the mouse skitter toward the back. But then it paused at the gas hose which evidently is its bridge to this magical kingdom of charred food scraps. I called to Valerie to grab me the bottle of 409, hoping to give the critter a squirt of caustic kitchen cleaner. She didn’t hear, and after 10 more seconds, the mouse leaped off into the netherworld.

On Wednesday night, knowing we had frittered (and fetaed) away an evening better spent sweeping the crumbs from our cluttered floors, Valerie put her hands on either side of her head.

“That was a really bad idea going to the beer garden,” she said. “There’s just so much left to do!”

She promptly crawled into bed for a three-hour nap. I cleaned the apartment and tried to put together a list of what I would pack. Up at 3, out the door at 5, no sleep. That was the plan. While I was sweeping and doing dishes, Val’s phone rang twice. It’s not unusual to have callers this late, since friends and family are on the West Coast, so I didn’t think much of it until after I had crawled into bed, expecting to sleep for an hour before a panicked packing session.

After I tossed and turned for half an hour, she got up to stop the phone from beeping about its unheard voicemails. She didn’t come back for several minutes, so I walked into the living room. She was sitting doubled over on the floor, phone to her ear, scribbling frantically on our trip itinerary.

“Our flight’s been cancelled,” she said. “They rescheduled us for 2:45 p.m.”

And so the fallout from American Airlines’ colossal baggage fuckup came home to roost for us. In actuality, it was kind of a relief. Valerie was happy to be able to sleep a few more hours, and so was I. The pressure was off, and though we’d wind up in Hawaii at 10 p.m. instead of 1 in the afternoon, it still seemed as fortuitous as a massive equipment failure could be. Oh how wrong I was.

A little information about the baggage problem: American Airlines had just debuted its brand-new baggage checking system at JFK. They were so proud of it that they put out press releases. My newspaper wrote about how they claimed it would drastically cut loading times and save passengers all kinds of hassle.

Then they put it to use and it broke. A software problem caused the entire baggage system to go down. No suitcases could move anywhere. They piled in lobbies like the personal effects of dead refugees. American started delaying, and then canceling its flights to buy time. They had no baggage system for nearly 24 hours.

That all happened on Wednesday, the day before our flight. When I checked the New York Post Thursday morning, all reports were that the baggage system would be up and running at 6 a.m.

We hopped in the car and got to the terminal just after 1 p.m., giving us the allotted 90 minutes before departure time to deal with any unexpected problems. We walked to the electronic check-in terminal and plugged in our information. The machine promptly told us there was an error. In lieu of the boarding passes it was dispensing to everyone else, it printed out a little receipt that said, “You may check in no earlier than 24 hours before departure time.”

“Bullshit,” I said, loudly enough for an American Airlines employee to overhear. He walked over, asked us what the problem was, walked us through the touchscreen checkout again, and then nodded.

“Your flight’s not until tomorrow,” he said. Val and I looked at the itinerary in disbelief. She had written the information from the voicemail correctly: August 1^st. But at 2:30 in the morning, what constitutes “yesterday,” “today” and “tomorrow” get pretty blurred.

The terrible realization dawned on us that we had stressed, woken up early, put the car in super-expensive long-term parking a full day earlier than the airline wanted us. It also dawned on us that American Airlines was hoping we would politely swallow the fact that they had bumped us a full 30 hours from our carefully planned flight time. When you’ve got five days of vacation time, every hour counts, let alone every day, and we had a pre-paid hotel room waiting for us in Waikiki.

I was livid. I don’t deal well with transit inconveniences when they’re as minor as poorly publicized weekend subway service changes. When it means spending an entire day sitting sourly in my apartment instead of strolling on the beach 6,000 miles away, it’s a whole other ball game.

We got in line at the check-in desks behind about 75 other people and I mulled my building rage. I also called the airline a few foul names, which was enough to attract the attention of a TV news crew who were looking for just such a hapless traveler.

“Have you been affected by the baggage delays?” the well-coiffed black-haired woman with the microphone asked me. Yes, I told her. We were going to lose a day of our vacation.

“Well could we interview you about it? We’re trying to cover this story,” she said. “We want to help you by showing what’s going on.”

Ah, pandering to one’s sources. How charming. I explained that we were reporters ourselves and that she should find someone else, but she pleaded a little and I relented.

“Are you angry that their baggage problem is affecting your vacation?” Yes, I said. We had a very short vacation planned, and it’s unacceptable to lose an entire day.

“Have they offered you anything?” she said almost breathlessly. Here it is, the big scoop, the aha moment. “Any vouchers or compensation for your inconvenience?”

She wanted me to erupt with more of the shouting she heard before the cameras started rolling.

“Well, we’re waiting in line right now to talk to them, so I have no idea what they will offer,” I told her evenly.

“First American Airlines is the first airline to start charging passengers a fee to check their bags, and now this. As a traveler, what’s your reaction to that?”

She was really trying to bait me.

“Economic times are tough,” I said. “I’m not going to get mad at the airline for charging the fee. I’m just going to carry my bag on the plane instead.”

That was that. The TV crew wandered off, and we waited for another 15 minutes to get to a clerk. To American’s credit, the clerk was very helpful. She first told us that she could bump us up to 6:50 a.m. tomorrow, but that all Hawaii flights were booked solid today. I asked her to see if she could transfer us to another airline serving Hawaii, and without a word of protest, she did. It took her about 10 minutes of searching databases and she warned us we would have to hurry to catch the flight, but she put us on a plane to San Francisco at 2:55 p.m. where we transferred to a United flight to Hawaii.

Relief. Exultation. Tears of gratitude, almost, except for the realization that American thought it would be more acceptable to cost us an entire day of our vacation than to first try and get us on any other flight to our destination on the same day. I do not appreciate that.

We thanked the clerk profusely and rushed off to the terminal, but the circumstances stuck in my craw. I still don’t know if I’ll ever fly American again.

Everything went smoothly after that except for the TSA people. They pulled us aside at both JFK and San Francisco to search us and our bags. It’s a minor indignity, I realize, but that rationale kind of embraces the “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” mentality. It also screws with my brain. I’m Mr. Unassuming White Guy. If you put a little pomade in my hair, you probably couldn’t tell me apart from the wholesome, gee-golly spawn of some insurance-selling Levittown dweller from the 1950s. I realize the TSA is trying to avoid racial profiling, but twice in a row?

Maybe this is an omen, too. If they do it again on the way back home, I think I’m going to go get a different haircut or something.

# posted by Jeremy @ 10:59 PM 0 comments

Unwilling to surrender all the near-tropical activities we had planned for, we made reservations for various boat trips and set out for Duval Street to replace our clothes and swim gear. Unkempt and wearing the same (full-length) clothes as yesterday, we ventured out into the stifling daylight.

Duval Street is the primary attraction on Key West itself—a 2-mile stretch lined with bars and touristy shops that teem with boneheaded T-shirts and thong panties with slogans like “LICK ME.” It’s optimistic to think that any woman who would wear that underwear would look like anything else but a trussed ham in them. But a few of the shops had clothes we were willing to be seen in, and soon we had spent more than $100 each on swimsuits, shorts, sandals and sunscreen.

Then, as I lurched around American Apparel in my sweat-soaked corduroys and Stones T-shirt, thinking this was something I could be doing in Brooklyn, my phone rang. The airline had just delivered our bags to the hotel. I thought back to the stores we had visited. Each one had a “no refunds” policy.

Val has a theory that the merchants of Key West have a pact with American Eagle to “misplace” travelers’ luggage in order to stimulate business on the island. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether a contractor like American Eagle would jeopardize its contractual relationship with a global carrier like American Airlines with such dirty pool. But it’s an agreeably romantic notion that harkens back to the scrappy entrepreneurship that made Key West the wealthiest city (per capita) in the nation during the 19^th century.

Key West was founded by wreckers—that is, men who salvaged the cargo from ships run aground on the reefs surrounding the dangerous Florida Straits. The wreckers’ first priority was to rescue the poor souls aboard the ships, but after that, the cargo was fair game. At least one of the three wrecker museums in town proudly proclaim that 125 years ago, nearly every household on the island had its own handmade set of silver—never mind the fact that the monogram on the forks and knives didn’t match the families’ initials. The town was built by people who made their fortunes on the misfortune of others. Now that steam power and more reliable navigation has made wrecking obsolete, it’s refreshing to think the natives have come up with a metaphorical wrecking trade to keep the spirit of their ancestors alive.

Musing on this fact, we wandered back to the hotel, where we promptly collapsed in a heap in the air conditioning. Final first-day tally: eight clothing stores, zero museums.

# posted by Jeremy @ 9:52 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 22
3:08 p.m.

We’ve made it as far as Miami International Airport, where we will spend an hour and a half waiting for a connecting flight to Key West. It’s been an oddly long day already—the first time in ages I can remember getting up before 11 on a Sunday. Brooklyn is a wasteland at 8 a.m. on the day of rest. We had free rein over Atlantic Avenue all the way out to JFK. The airport was practically deserted, too.

The plane wasn’t, though. It was an American Airlines Airbus A300, which, judging from the rickety CRT television screens mounted in the center ceiling console, could have been among the first to roll out of the Airbus factory 30 years ago. It was packed to the gills.

A300s are larger than most of the planes I’ve flown in lately. Boeing 737s and A320s are single-aisle planes, and because of this, the cramped space is a little more forgivable. This A300 had three rows of seats and two aisles. I had an aisle seat. People kept brushing their asses against the side of my head. If anything, it felt MORE claustrophobic than those smaller planes.

And, after feeling strangely relaxed all morning, leisurely eating the mediocre greasy airport food and breezing through the security checkpoint in all of 2 minutes, finally that familiar feeling returned: I wanted to beat to death half the people within earshot. A girl and her mother occupied the seats across the aisle to my left. She looked to be 14 or 15, and her tight jeans, striped socks and carefully loosened designer sneakers hinted at a healthy mall addiction. But she acted as if she were 6 or 7, draping herself sullenly across her mother’s lap and dangling her legs over the armrest into the aisle, kicking incessantly at my armrest. I wanted to smother her with an airsick bag.

The flight attendant was strangely surly, too. He looked like Vincent D’Onofrio with a tan and a 5 o’clock shadow. As the plane was climbing into the sky, one of the overhead bins popped open two seats away from him. Another passenger and I waved his attention and pointed to the bin. He shrugged the way a tow truck driver might shrug while impounding your car.

And what was our televised entertainment for this two-and-a-half-hour flight? CBS’s morning show plus an episode of “How I Met Your Mother.” Headphones for this scintillating bit of programming were $2 each.

I shouldn’t complain too much, though. The flight left on time and we arrived in Miami early. Of course, then we were stuck on the taxiway because a thunderstorm was approaching and all workers were being called indoors until the lightning threat passed. But even that took less than 10 minutes.

Miami International looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher. It has at least five concourses, all of which are connected by a series of meandering, narrow, windowless corridors that arbitrarily send up and down escalators every 45 seconds. Around each corner are helpful signs that tell you how many more minutes it will take to reach each concourse from where you are now (15 to 20 minutes for us, I estimate). Big posters all over the walls herald the new airport (Being built right behind these walls!). Here’s hoping they figure out some way to make travelers feel less like they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole.

11:17 p.m.
Ah, Key West. What a quaint little town at the very tip of the ragged, spotty Florida Keys. It was dumping rain on the tarmac as we were bused out to the small turboprop that would take us to Key West from Miami. We climbed aboard and I listened to the portly, hibiscus-shirted middle-aged men sitting in the seats ahead of us opine loudly about the town. Then I passed out.

When I woke up, the sun was glistening on the ocean below as we descended on Key West. As the plane turned for final approach, I saw boatyards, elegant sailboats moored in the narrow channels clearly visible as dark patches of blue against the rich turquoise of the shallow seabed, and row after row of metal-roofed single-floor houses. It looked surprisingly low key.

I was enthused when we stepped off the plane and walked into the two-gate terminal. This place had a good, relaxed vibe. That all ended when, after five minutes of watching other people’s luggage whirl around on the carousel, the baggage handler stuck his head through the hatch and told us that was all the luggage there was.

Goddamned American Airlines lost our suitcases.

We waited for 15 minutes for anyone to show up at the American Airlines desk to help us sort things out. Evidently the employees, all two of them, were out helping load the commuter flight going back to Miami. They took a description of our bags, punched it into the system, and said most likely the bags just missed our flight and would arrive on the next plane coming into the airport. I gave my cell number and we went to the hotel. The taxi driver at the terminal took one look at our meager carry-ons and said, “Don’t tell me. They lost your luggage?”

Apparently that’s normal for Key West. It is normal for a fourth of the passengers to arrive on the island without everything they packed for the island.

So, mildly discouraged, we checked into our room and decided to venture out for food, expecting my phone to ring at any time with word of our newly arrived suitcases. We stumbled around Duval Street, the main drag, drank in the rows of high-end restaurants and self-parodic tourist trap chain stores. I tried conch fritters, ate three-fourths of a hamburger the size of my head at an outdoor restaurant and watched a wild chicken peck at the flecks of bacon on the floor before we wandered back toward the hotel.

10:45 p.m. Still no phone call. My battery is almost dead, and the phone charger is—of course—in my fucking suitcase. So we went to the drug store to buy the basic supplies that should have arrived with us on the plane: toothbrushes, toothpaste, sunscreen and contact lens accessories. Total cost to us: $37. We still have no fresh clothes.

I called the 1-800 number for the baggage claim at 11 p.m. No progress on finding our bags, but the electronic ladyvoice on the other end cheerfully informed me that most bags are found within 24 hours. Swell. We reported the bags lost at 6 p.m. Even if those clowns do find them, that still means we’ll waste one day of our vacation without camera, swimsuits, sandals or umbrellas.

The taxi driver told us the airline gives $50 vouchers for the inconvenience. He also said the last time it happened to him, he spent that $50 on getting drunk. This was the most reassuring thing I heard all day.

Tomorrow: Hemingway’s house and the shipwreck museums. In stinky clothes. And without pictures.

# posted by Jeremy @ 7:36 AM 0 comments