Thursday, December 21, 2006

Stuck Inside of Philly with the Lynchburg Blues Again

I’m blogging from the Philadelphia airport, using Dymphna’s laptop and a pay-per-connect wifi network. When I was waiting at Pearson Airport in Toronto this afternoon, there were plenty of available power outlets, but no available wifi. Here in Philly they have the wifi, but no outlets anywhere near the seats.

Airports are perverse.

I scouted around here and found a power outlet on the wall behind the gate I’ll be departing from, right next to an airport wheelchair. Jackpot! Set up my laptop, use my suitcase tipped on its end for a mousepad, and I’m a happy camper.
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My flight plan included a four-hour layover here, so I went ahead and paid AT&T for twenty-four hours of connectivity to their erratic and plodding network — it was either that or the bar, which would have been more expensive. Cleared the email, skype-chatted with my better half, put up a post, and pretended I wasn’t sitting in a cold corner at the airport.

About half an hour before departure time, the airline announced a ninety minute delay for my flight. A moment after that an airport employee requested the wheelchair for someone who actually needed it (probably for a real blogger), and I was reduced to a butt-numbing position on the cold floor against the wall.

But a few minutes later an airline employee came back to the counter, saw my plight, and volunteered to fetch another wheelchair for me. The world is full of kind people!

Now I am simulating a crippled person again, whiling away the wait time by bloviating for no particular reason. In other good news, there’s no Jihad visible to speak of from my vantage point.

Fair is fair: now I must plug the airline.

Fly US Airways Express! They have nice employees.

1 comments:

lumberjack said...

Don't forget:
Fly US Airways -- they aren't afraid of grounding passengers that behave suspiciously, even if they're Imams.