Traveling Fool

You know it’ll be a good travel day when the mistakes come early. When I travel something inevitably goes wrong. Nothing of a cataclysmic nature occurs—they’re minor, annoyances really. But something will always go wrong.

I like to start with problems early and get them out of the way. It’s less stressful that way. This trip to Portland began with a minor problem—at which terminal will I start the air portion of my travel? It was a Delta ticket but operated by Horizon Airlines. Delta = terminal A; Horizon = terminal B—I see no possible problems of clarity for a novice traveler like myself. I take three or four trips per year requiring such conveyances, so let us agree to call me an infrequent traveler. Delta? Horizon? Delta? ‘Eff’ it, I’ll start at the Delta gate and see what happens. Terminal A, here I come. As an infrequent air traveler, one that is never described as normal by any metric, I guessed wrong.

The line was short. The Delta counter agents were mixing it up with the traveling hoard, directing them to the open self-help kiosk terminals. “Step right up. This one is open.” How many times must these pedestrian traffic directors repeat these phrases in any given day?

Just as I began to input my travel information on the kiosk screen, the system decides to cycle through a reboot. Five attempts later I give up and catch the eye of one of the blue-vested customer herders. She directed me to the line that was quickly forming as travelers realized the only way to get a boarding pass was at the actual counter. I got in line only to hear the announcement that the kiosk was now rebooted and ready to serve customers again. I returned to the fickle robotic agent and entered the nine digits of my ticket number and pressed ‘Next’. Nothing, then the screen flickered in a menacing manner. “You must enter a 14-16 digit ticket number to proceed.” What about my nine digit ticket number? I was confusion, wondering if I had been given a bogus ticket.

I waved for assistance. The agent, this one of flesh and blood, shook her head at this pathetic traveler, and with a weary voice, directed me to walk the seven minutes to Terminal B and check-in at the Horizon Air counter.

With the assistance of the helpful Horizon counter agent I was soon on my way up the stairs to gate 24.

Now, shaken by my trivial travel woes, I wondered if this is not all part of some sinister traveler IQ test. If you fail, you don’t get to travel. Pass the test and away you go. Are they secretly assigning status categories to travelers? Not the openly discussed silver-gold-admiral-million- mile-type categories that are universally used to segregate travelers and that simplify the travel discrimination process. I’m referring to the categories that are never discussed in public. These are the traveler intelligence categories and have no relationship to personal IQ. I hypothesize these categories are ranked in order of travel competence: idiot, fool, normal, smart, genius.

I’ll be proudly displaying my self-assigned ‘fool traveler’ credentials. Wow, it feels good to be upgraded from ‘idiot’.

Next time I travel to Hawaii I’d like to avoid all the air travel stress. I’ll just take the train instead.