So the story of my travels over the last however many hours (lost track).
10:00pm, Tuesday:- Jump into car, dash for airport (LAX).
11:55pm, Get on plane to Chicago (ORD).
12:30am, Wednesday, flight actually leaves. Delay due to “waiting for all the luggage”. They hope to make up some delay in-flight.
06:05am, Land at Chicago. Of course, this is really 04:05am, and what with getting settled, working a bit on my talk, with talking with acrobats (see earlier) and the like, I think I only actually had a bit over two hours sleep. Hmmm. They let the passengers concerned about making connections to get off plane first. Hurrah.
06:10am Walk at high speed across the airport to completely different concourse, to find my flight to Louisville at gate F4, due to leave at 06:55am.
06:30am Get to gate, ask about flight in slight panic. Lady calmly tells me that they’re not calling that flight yet. Several other flights are being called at that time. I go to restroom nearby, and begin transformation into more formal attire.
06:40am Return to gate, go to desk. Different lady tells me that flight has closed. Huh?! I digest this unexpected and confusing fact for five minutes, and begin to rummage in bag for phone number of organizers of the day’s events. How could this have happened? There were no announcements for the flight. Not that I heard, and I was listening out for them.
06:45am I hear (from another lady at actual boarding-pass-taking gate) that the flight is now closed, the traditional (apparently) ten minutes before flight time. Oh. So other lady had got it wrong, jumped the gun by five minutes, and I could have made the flight, in fact. I was standing there all the time, and they made no calls about this flight.
06:50am I, and a bunch of other similarly incredulous people get in line to get booked onto next flight. Next flight is not until three hours later, and because of the Louisville truck show, all flights that day are booked and I can only go on standby. In any case, I’m going to miss the entire morning of talks, and the only talk in the afternoon will in fact be the one I’m going to give. Sigh.
07:00am With priority standy status (I’m told) in pocket, I find myself back at the transition between concourse B and C, in line at Starbucks? Why? (1) I’m hungry, and (2) I always go to precisely this place and order precisely the same thing (tall coffee of the day and a cinnamon scone) every time I come through Chicago airport, for getting on for a decade now. I love that.
07:10am Note -for no particular reason- that price of my standard Chicago order has gone up by $0.80. Since my flight is at 10:50am, I have quite a bit of time on my hands. Call number of organisers and leave message about the scheduling disaster, and then decide to pay -reluctantly- the $6.95 for 24 hours of wireless web access on the Chicago airport system to allow me to send an email to the organisers. This would also allow me to write a post about the amusing encounter on the flight, check the rest of my mail, etc.
07:30am Having lost (to other lap-toppers) all the power-hookup points I could see within five or ten minutes walk of the gate, I stick to batteries, and manage to get onto the web twice. Once to send the email, once to check blog. Did not manage to get onto it again, annoyingly. System clogged? Unusably slow? Spent rest of time writing more of the talk I was due to give, and polishing it up.
10:30am Showed up at gate just as my name was being called. Got boarding pass and was on plane…continuing to polish talk.
1:05pm Louisville time. Louisville. Picked up by Matt Lippert and driven to lunch to meet other symposium speakers and attendees, and to eat some lunch.
2:00pm Gave talk in Andrew Chamblin Memorial Symposium, entitled “A is for Action. A is for Andrew!” Helped with other tributes to Andrew in next session. Also gave tribute at Memorial later in the day. Memorial was a searing combination of emotions. Andrew was a great guy. I will say more later about the whole thing.
8:00pm Dinner with Andrew’s family.
11:30pm Preparing to go to bed at seedy Day’s Inn I booked a room in. Realized I forgot to pack pyjamas.
11:55pm Somehow lost almost an hour dithering away. How? Set alarm to wake me up at 4:30am since I need to be at the airport at 5:00am. So I’ll get maybe four hours sleep. Whooo-hoo!
5:15am Thursday. At Louisville airport. Started this blog post.
5:40am Decided to postpone writing on this blog in view of fact that might miss flight while blogging about having missed previous flight.
7:05am Chicago. Stopped at my usual spot and got the usual things again. Tasty.
7:25am Chicago blogging. Checked 85 emails.
Flight to LA boards soon. Time to log off the Chicago site so that I don’t have to pay another $6.95.
Looking ahead to teaching class after I land in a few hours, then going to two meetings, then a big important faculty meeting. Maybe I’ll get some proper sleep eventually, later tonight.
-cvj
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:39 am
Ah, the joys of airtravel.
I’ve only been to O’Hare once, but I hated it. The long tunnels with travelators and mysterious neon lights was like being in the film ‘Logan’s Run’, however, which was good. Other than that, it seemed like an even less charming version of Heathrow (another airport that I hate).
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 am
Proper sleep is sleep as measured by the circadian clock for an observer who is traveling through (space)time zones.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:02 am
Clifford, I experienced an identical missed flight story not only once but twice in those E/F terminals in O’Hare. Now I anxiously hang around the gate trying to lip-read what they are saying. Irritatingly, it seems impossible to avoid O’Hare for almost any cross-country flight, it’s all part of some grand scheme, I just can’t figure out which…
Useful tip: I find that chances for prompt and useful service are increased if you exit the terminal and go to the check-in counter, instead of the customer service inside the terminal, those seem always overloaded (this is one job I don’t want to have…).
Clearly I am spending too much time in airports.
March 24th, 2006 at 4:03 am
Clifford, you seem to live a wild and exciting life. One moment flying to Chicago (or was it Louisville?) for a whirlwind talk and appearance. The week before, venturing into an otherworldly desert. Then working out arcane calculations about the ultimate realities of the universe. Or going off to Taiwan for a month. It seems like an elite level. Is this typical of the Physicist’s Life? Or are there many more of Physicist Tribe who may love physics as much as you do, and work just as hard, but never get to go anywhere or give talks, and spend their time doing the equivalent of cutting mats or washing sign holders?
March 24th, 2006 at 5:02 am
For hitting targets, I won a prize of flights and entry for a day to Disneyland Paris (via London Heathrow). But the girl who organised it (who I’d pestered for a date) told the taxi driver to take us to the wrong terminal!
This was at 6am. The traffic was so bad we missed the plane. We finally got there in time for a late lunch and joined long queues… Moral: don’t travel unless you are organising it yourself. It’s OK if it’s your own error, but too frustrating otherwise.
March 24th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
Pyracantha,
There’s absolutely nothing glamourous about my version of the “Physicist’s Life”. Most of what goes on is fairly typical. I do my share (and more) of the “cutting mats and washing sign holders”. Going to the desert and hunting for street food in Taiwan is nothing to do with my physicist life, really. These are just personal choices I make about how to spend my out-of-office time. I cannot speak for what other physicists choose to do with their time. Some of them take actual real regular holidays, for example. I’m still trying to figure out how to do that. Physics and other “work-like” tasks always come with me somehow.
Cheers,
-cvj
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:58 pm
[…] I believe that that all bloggers eventually write about their travel experiences, such as here, here, here, and here. Some people write about the wonderful places they have gone, the interesting people they have met, and the fantastic meals they have had. Others write about the horrors that have been inflicted on them by airlines, surly customs officials, poorly managed hotels, unpredictable weather, and germs that new to their gastric systems. My stories are of the second variety. I rarely travel for pleasure, but work has kept me accumulating at least enough frequent flyer miles to make the lowest tier of premium traveler status year after year. […]
April 17th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
[…] You will recall that last month I went to a memorial service and all-day symposium for Andrew Chamblin, who died in February. (You can read much more in this link, particularly in the comment thread.) The memorial was in Louisville, Kentucky, where Andrew was on the Physics Faculty. Several of Andrews friends, colleagues and collaborators came to the event. The dominant component of the attendance was from people who were in either of the physics departments at Louisville, Lexington and Cincinatti, the three closest cities, which have physics links with each other (some of those links involved collaborations with Andrew). Andrew’s family and several close friends were there, and some physicists from further away, such as myself. There were also readings of the numerous letters that were sent and from other communications (e.g. from the thread of the post I did on this blog). These were from friends and colleagues from much further afield who were unable to make it to the memorial symposium and service. […]