Traveling

I never understood how people missed flights. Connecting flights, sure, if your initial flight rolls in late and you’ve got to haul ass to get to the gate across the airport in some unreasonable sliver of time. But that first flight? I just always figured you had to be a real slack-ass to not be able to get to the airport two hours early like me, Little Miss Perfectpants.

Until this morning, when my eyes popped open and looked at my phone clock and BAM HOLY FUCK IT’S 6:03 AND MY FLIGHT LEAVES AT 6:45 WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUU. And I made a valiant effort, throwing together the rest of my travel gear into the suitcase and taking what Ray has informed me was a fatal shower — the deed that did me in and made me miss the flight. But I can’t get on a plane unshowered on the trip out; it’s bad luck. Maybe on the trip home. Anyway.

I drove like a meth addict and got to the Delta counter at 6:41, at which point the counter man told me the plane had already left. I felt like an idiot and wanted to cry, of course, like a little baby who didn’t get her way. But I went to special services and the sassy but nice lady hooked me up with a 2 p.m. flight, which has a layover in Minneapolis but that will get me to Portland at 7 p.m. If all goes according to plan, of course.

So I’m just sort of killing time until then. About to drink lots of coffee and maybe even take a nap. I feel terrible that I basically lost a whole day — and especially because I inconvenienced my hosts. But now I promise I won’t give anyone a hard time for missing a flight. And I am going to write Steve Jobs SUCH a strongly worded letter about the iPhone alarm that just decided it wouldn’t go off today (I triple checked and it was set correctly for the reasonable hour of 4:30 a.m.).