Monday, October 24th
Up bright and early (but still later than I was supposed to be). I showered and did 98% of my packing the night before, so I just had to get dressed before I could leave. Dragged my carry-on and little bag down to the car, called Danny (who agreed to get up 4 hours before his first class - on a Monday morning - to drive me to the airport; the kid's a saint) to tell him I was on my way, and then took off. I made it to my mom's house in record time, mostly because I drove like a maniac. See, was leaving my place right around the time I was supposed to be arriving at her place. Which is not good.
I can neither confirm nor deny the needle on my speedometer hitting 70 at one point on Telegraph.
Anyway, I get to my mom's, and hop right into Danny's car. He gives me a quart-sized Ziploc bag for my liquids (Damn terrorists, keeping me from the good things in life. Like full-sized bottles of shampoo.) and a battery-operated alarm clock, since I already know that the little room in a hostel I've rented doesn't have any power outlets in it. This makes using my regular alarm clock a problem. Normally, I use my phone, because I can plug it in by my bed. But my phone's a battery hog, and I'm going to need all the juice I can get if I want to take advantage of its magical map-generating powers. But now this little alarm clock I'm borrowing is missing the knob for changing the alarm time, and it's currently set for 5. AM. Like, in the morning. Which is horrifying. (Well, technically, it's also set for 5 PM, but that doesn't really count.) I decide I'll work on it later.
One rather uneventful car ride later, and we're at the curb outside the airport. Danny helps me hoist my bags out of the car, and sends me on my way. The line at the Spirit counter is pretty short, so before I know it, I'm standing at a self-check-in-kiosk. Now, what Travelocity forgot to mention when they told me that Spirit had the cheapest round-trip ticket price was that it was going to cost me $40 – EACH WAY – to have a carry-on bag. (You know, the convenient one. With the wheels. That just about EVERY. OTHER. AIRLINE. IN. THE. WORLD. lets you have for free.) Meaning that they were never actually the cheapest ticket in the results. But it's too late to fix that now. I check in, and the system assigns me a seat but asks me if I want to change it. I look and see that I'm in the middle seat of three. Oh hell no. So I quickly grab one of the last remaining aisle seats and print out my boarding pass before they can try to charge me for anything else. On to security.
First up is the guy who has to check my boarding pass and my passport and make sure the name matches. He stares at them for awhile (I swear, I thought he was going to complain about the font not matching or something), and then looks from me to the passport pic a few times before he draws a couple of triangles on my boarding pass and hands it back to me. What those are supposed to signify, I have no idea.Maybe they're TSA code for “This chick's passport photo really sucks.” Because it definitely does.
Anyway, next up are the different lines through security. I pick one in the middle on a whim, and it naturally stops dead about 10 seconds later. What is so difficult about the whole “Take your laptop out of your bag,” I may never know, but EVERY TIME I've ever gone through airport security (which is about 10 now), some asshole in front of me has failed to get out his laptop, and they have to back up the conveyor belt and pull the thing out and piss off the rest of the line. Eventually, my stuff starts moving again, and I look up to see one of those “Surprise! You're naked!” scanners. But really, whoever's looking at that screen has seen it all before, so I couldn't really care less. Unfortunately, they've decided to bring three old people in wheelchairs into this line right in front of me, and of course it's a huge ordeal to get them up out of the chairs, and into the scanner, and then get them to hold their arms up juuuuust right and all. But eventually, I get scanned (which seriously takes a quarter of a second; I was impressed) and move on through so I can put my damn shoes back on.
I head to my gate and, even though it's pretty crowded, I manage to find a seat. Unfortunately, this seat is being blockaded by a guy who decided to stretch his legs across the entire aisle before taking a nap. I said “Excuse me” 2 or 3 times, and eventually just kicked his feet out of the way. I didn't end up waiting very long. About 20 minutes after I sat down, they called boarding for Zone 1, which I was apparently upgraded to when I agreed to pay for a carry-on. Oh joy!
[As a sidenote, I really wish all of the American airlines would get their shit together when it comes to boarding. I've seen videos online of some European airline's boarding process, and they do it the right way: They start from the back of the plane and load forward, alternating side-to-side. That way, you don't have to brush past EVERY SINGLE PERSON ALREADY SEATED to get to your seat, and then hold up the entire line behind you when you have to stop and hoist your carry-on into the overhead bin. I swear, they get this plane fully loaded and everybody's carry-ons in the bin in 10 minutes. Now that's what I'm talking about!]
But, anyways, it takes awhile for everyone to get seated, and naturally I get there before either of my row-mates, which means I have to attempt to get back out into the crowded aisle to let them in. But, eventually, we're all seated and buckled up and ready for take-off. The flight is pretty uneventful. I do a little reading and a little sleeping. The food cart comes by, and I buy a bottle of water and the smallest can of Pringles you've ever seen, all for the low, low price of $5 dollars. *snort* Man, Spirit sucks. Remind me never to fly them again.
*Edit: Just think, it took me this much text to cover the first 4 hours of my trip! Mwahahahaha...
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