The Travails of Travel

Okay, so there I went, off to France. And me, loving to fly as much as I do (note the irony you can't hear in the voice I'm not speaking in). Climb on board a plane in Fargo, ND, for a quick hop to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Here's a wasted flight if ever there was one; you're no sooner up than you start to come down. I'm convinced that airlines only have these types of flights for the benefit of folks like me who are terrified by take-offs and landings. Hop aboard a DC10 in Minneapolis for a 9-hour flight to Amsterdam. Now we've all heard the stories from travellers about how they were on the jumbo jet over night over the Atlantic and there were only ten other passengers on board and the flight attendants moved everybody to first class and everyone got a whole row to them selves and stretched out and slept all the way over, etc, etc, etc. Horse hockey! The plane was packed - every available seat taken and for all I know they were stowing folks in the luggage compartment. No room in the overhead for carry-ons, so the bags and coats went under the seats, so there was no room for you feet either. And nine hours sitting on something that can only nominally be called a seat - it was under my ass and I was supposed to keep it there, but it was surely not designed by human beings for sitting on - though it would have made a good torture device! And it was SO BLOODY HOT on the plane! I sweated and wriggle and was generally miserable the whole way from Minneapolis to Amsterdam.

We arrive in Amsterdam, and I make it through passport control, pick up some Euros and head for my last plane to Toulouse. Once aboard - this plane half empty by the way - we wait to begin. The plane is backed out of the gate. The tow truck unhooks. The plane begins to move forward and CRUNCH!! Quizzical looks. Everyone looks around, looks out the windows, looks at each other. After a few moments, the captain explains there will be a delay. A few moments later, the captain explains that there has been an incident and the nose gear has suffered some damage. A moment or two later we are towed back into the gate - sound from under the plane like two foghorns mating every time the wheels turn around - and told that the plane has been deemed not airworthy and the flight has been cancelled. What happened? Seems that when the tow truck unhitched from the plane, the pilot forgot to put his foot on the break pedal. The plane rolled forward and ran into the tow truck. So I was in a plane crash, in a plane that hadn't left the ground yet, that hadn't in fact even gotten out of the gate area. How many people can boast of that one?

Okay, so we have to make new connections. Can they put me on a later flight? Sorry, all through flights from Amsterdam to Toulouse are full. I'll have to fly to Paris, then catch another plane to Toulouse. Now I'm really flustered. But, like a good boy, I quietly climb aboard the Paris flight with many of the other passengers who had run (not walked) off the crippled plane, and we're off again. Grrr.

By the way, just for the record, all airports all over the world look like American shopping malls. There's Pizza Hut and Chillis; there's the bookstore that looks strikingly like Barnes and Nobles; theres a couple dozen other shops that look just like shops you'd see in the Mall of America. In fact, if one never set foot out of the airports, one could travel all over the world and never know that one had even been outside of the US. Go figure! The Americanization of the world!

Any way, I was pretty perturbed by now, having to make new plans, board more planes, and what have you. Then, something occured that made everything almost worthwhile. We were coming into Paris. It was night by now. Below us, the city was spread out like a blanket of twinkling lights, nothing very distinguishing about it, looking not unlike any city you might fly into in this country. Then, the pilot banked the plane to the right, and there it was - the Eiffel Tower, all lit up, and rising up out of that sea of lights. What an impressive sight. And I never would have seen it had that other pilot not accidentally taken his foot off the break pedal at just the wrong moment. Serendipity!

Then into Charles de Gaul Airport, a dash from one end of the airport to the other to catch the next flight - fifty people in a mad run, hauling carry-ons and coats, desperate to reach the next gate before their plane takes off. Up again and drop us into Toulouse (Blagnac really, but who's keeping score at this point) and we're there at last. Well, almost. We made it, but it seems our luggage did not. Tired, puzzled travelers staring at the nearly empty baggage carrousel, faces struggling for expressions somewhere between disbelief, despair and outrage. Trudge over to the lost baggage claim window.

"My bag didn't arrive," I intone without emotion.

"Did you look in the back?" the agent asks.

"Pardon me?"

"There are a lot of bags in the back that arrived several hours ago on a plane from Norway," she says.

"Norway?"

"Oui, have a look."

So I do, and there in a pile of other lost luggage is my beloved duffle bag, a little piece of home in a strange land. Imagine my joy. Who cares how it got on the plane from Norway - maybe it just wanted to see the fjords, I don't know. Hell, I didn't care at that point. I just wanted to get to the hotel and crawl into bed. My colleague travelling with me suggests that we take the airport shuttle bus, which will drop us only a couple of blocks from the hotel, and we can walk the rest of the way. I give him one of those looks.

"Two Americans, dragging their luggage through the streets of Toulouse in the middle of the night?" I ask. "Are you insane?"

"Perhaps you're right," he says, looking at me like he's afraid I'll go postal any second and cause an international incident. "Maybe we should spring for the taxi after all."

And he did.