Easter 2019

From the days of domestic flying

Fake photo. Real story.

Embassy Suites / Orlando / Florida / USA

My hotel window is being pelted by sharp rain, a high pitch clacking, at the frequency of dog claws on wood floors. The thunder, rumbling octaves below, is as throaty as a Harley Davidson. Midway between the two, my sigh, at the precise frequency of a man’s sigh who thought he would be back home tonight, but is at that very moment realizing that he will not be.

Outside my hotel door the atrium happy-hour is mixing up a depressing aural cocktail of echoey sounds A player Piano, on an island, in a coy pond, is plunking out former hits that won’t prove to be classics. It is autonomously saving the hotel’s entertainment budget and providing a tacky soundtrack to free beer and post-conference small talk. Through my door I hear the sounds of people unwinding from their work day while I wind up to mine. The sounds by which I reflect all the ways the next 30 hours until Easter might unfold.

I focus out through the droplets running fast down the window, at the churning dark sky that is keeping me in Orlando. All flights into and out of Orlando are stopped for a line of twisty, nasty storms. We flew around the tops of these very storms last night on our way to Florida. I read this morning that they dispensed lethal force to a couple people in some state below last night while we flew around them. We watched the coffee in our cups ripple, and glanced up at the seatbelt sign, perhaps we would need to reach up to flip the switch, but didn’t.

Our trip, or our work schedule for the next couple days is planned by the airline a month in advance and given a proper name to refer to it by. This one is named L5175. It is our itinerary for several workdays and lists our flights, hotels, ground transportation and all associated times. 17:28 van, 18:48 departure etc.

A normal trip without changes would keep its name through to the end of it. But when a disruption to normal operations forces a substantial change to the plan, a new trip version is sent to us, and L5175 becomes L5175A, then L5175B with the next change, and so on. We are now on version L5175U. U is the 21st letter in the alphabet. I don’t know what happens after 26 changes.

On version D I was still at the hotel listening to the player piano machinate through Katy Perry songs. Should I sleep in anticipation of flying through most of the night? That is what plan D calls for. I don’t sleep, but stay awake watching our intinerary change. Plan F has us at the airport for a 10pm departure to Washington Dulles, where we will stay the night. Plan F is going to happen. Activate plan F…. Van time 20:42.

We arrive to a refugee camp of a terminal. Spring-break mouse-ear wearing kids currently exhausting all their ideas, their parents having long since exhausted all of theirs. Kids manning the vacated information desk, their parents sleeping on piles of backpacks, given up for lost. I buy a couple hours of caffeine, but not so much that I can’t sleep on arrival. Weaving through faces of bored desperation I arrive at our gate to see that our flight will not leave tonight at all, but at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Plan F did not cover this option. I stop drinking my coffee and sit to watch the schedule evolve. Plans G through K haggled over flying the plane or riding in the back. K through N can’t decide which hotel we would stay in in a sold out amusement world. N says we stay in Orlando and work the 8:30 am flight. I throw away the coffee.

I sleep, and wake accordingly. But I wake to plan U. 6 plans I never saw and the one I am currently to believe. Flying at 11:45 to Washington Dulles then ride as passengers the rest of the way home.

Plan U stuck. Plan U is alright. It puts me where I am now: riding in first class from Dulles to LAX. Eating, drinking, and being grateful that I am not writing about one of the other plans, but about plan 21 and how it got me home in time for Easter.

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