Well it's 6 o'clock int the morning here and I'm lying awake in bed, have been awake for the past two hous as well. So I figure this would be the perfect time to tell ye about my time in SFO.
It all started off okay, I arrived at the airport 12.00 found the desk where I was meant to go for stnad by. No queue. Wow things are looking good. Went up and explained I would like to fly stand by from there to LAX. She was very nice about it until, she asked me had I listed. Now you see I had phoned up United Airlines and asked if I needed to list. I had been told very clearly that it was not necessary, I told her this. Her demeanoir turned icey. I asked was there a problem. A cold silence followed. Then she smiled and said no, no problem. She then tagged my bag, put it on the conveyor belt and handed me a boarding pass. I thought wow that was great, really looked like there was going to be a problem there for a minute.
You see how standby usually works is (well in my experience anyway) they won't check you in until they know there's a space, makes sense so you don't end up waiting for hours. To my dismay I realized that this was not how UA run the show. They give you a thing that is cunningly disguised as a boarding pass and you through security to rot until they see fit to put you on a plane. I waited 11 hours and was ferried between 3 different gates all about 20 miles apart at opposite ends of the airport. I went between these gates about ten times in the course of the day.. Some of us standby people didn't make. I saw a little old Asian couple just give up on the long trek between gates, they collapsed and were sucked into the moving walkway. None of the other standby people even stopped, we were 8 hours in at this stage and the madness had begun to seep into our brains. The way they saw it that was two less to compete with.
There were over 50 people on the stand by list for that day all but about three were ahead of me. I am sure this was the doing of that lady who I spoke to first, who said there was no problem. She probably attached a note or something "Ginger fucker make sure he's last" I started off at 12 on the and by the end of the day was like 48.
And I was last, very last person on the very last flight for that day. They called out my name just in time, at that point I could feel my brain beginning to turn to mush. I got on the flight but it was still happening, I couldn't understand it. Had it been too late after all?Had the effects of spending an entire day in San Francisco airport become entirely unreversable? Then they gave me some tea and well that just didn't really seem like an issue any more. I then fell asleep.
There is a moral to this story.
" There is no problem so great or grave that it cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea " or in this case a passable cup of tea that is just a step above lukewarm and tastes distinctly of styrofoam.
Free upgrade for your Windows Live Messenger! Click here!
Decided to set up a blog to document my travels( when I can be arsed that is).
