Trip Report: Fear and Loathing in Manhattan (ABQ-ORD-LGA-EWR-ORD-ABQ)

Greetings faithful! Your intrepid road-warrior is here again. One
more week in the barrel of a gun aimed at the ******** of eternity,
and my head has been spinning around so rapidly it is coming
completely off my freaking neck.

My satan-worshipping boss gave me a last-minute gig in midtown
Manhattan (that's New York City, you rubes), teaching a class from
December 1 to December 5. Well, the sun does not always shine on me,
and this time was no exception.

My travel agent informed me that there were very few flights to be had
into NYC for that time-frame, she was talking about flying me into
Philly or Baltimore, etc. To hell with that noise. Also, hotels were
at a premium. Midtown Manhattan is not the cheapest place on earth
when Christmas is not breathing down our necks like a drunk on a
three-day bender, and when the Christmas Spirit is upon those who live
in flyover country, they really seem to develop a yen to hie
themselves off to Broadway and view them thar neon lights. Hotels,
when available, run from $300 a night and up. Some of them were
quoting $1600 per night, and one was a spectacular $12,500 per night.
At those rates, damned right I'm stealing the towels. At those
prices, I'll steam off the wallpaper and roll up the damned carpet
when I check out.

My company, whose management are all apparently on crack, has a
company policy of $150 per night, tops. Regardless of locality. Oh
yeah, that was going to work out well.

My travel agent finally came through with a round-trip on AA for $800;
ABQ-ORD-LGA and back. It was all that was left – a first-class seat.
Darn. Guess I'll have to take it, but don't I wish I could ride in
coach?

My company wanted me to save money on a hotel by staying in Weehawken,
New Jersey and taking the ferry across every morning (never rent a car
in Manhattan). I could not feature that, so I spent the weekend
before the trip looking around online. My travel agent recommended
that I try a bucketshop like hotels.com, as all the available hotels
had been turned over to consolidators by then and she could no longer
get me a hotel room at all. Lovely. Oh yeah, there was a 'boutique'
B&B in Chelsea. No smoking. Can you see me staying there? Me,
neither.

So, my first experience with hotels.com, and I guess I could say it
worked out ok. Kind of. Mostly. Got a hotel at the ‘Milford Plaza'
hotel on 45th between 7th and 8th, and I was to work at a customer
site on 56th and 8th. Hmmm, only 11 blocks. Yeah, I could do that.
Price was $129 for the first night, going up every night to $399 on
Thursday night. That's life in NYC, folks. I went for it. Thing is,
with hotels.com, you have to pay upfront, and there are no refunds.
OK, in for a penny, in for a pound. I got a room at the Marriott
Courtyard at LGA for Friday night, had a return flight booked for
early Saturday morning, and I didn't feature hotfooting across
Manhattan early on Saturday morning to Queens.

The flight in was fine – I got the first class seats for both legs
outbound (AA FLT 2064 and 350). Let me tell you, FC on AA Super 80's
is quite nice. Just like the ‘old days' with hot towels, good eats,
and so on. That was the beginning and the end of the luxury
treatment.

My first inkling that I was actually arriving in hell in the summer
season was the arrival at LGA. Ah, summer in hell. Great beach, just
no water. Got my checked bag with no problem, and then stood in line
for a taxi for about an hour. People pushing, shoving, cutting in
line and being threatened with violence by pushees. Gypsy cab drivers
literally pulling people out of line, grabbing their bags and walking
off with them so the poor out-of-towner had no choice but to follow
them. Whew! Welcome to New York – I kept my hand on my bags.

Got into my hotel – let me tell you about the lovely Milford Plaza.
Built in the early stone age, this monstrosity is both old and ugly.
As an evil smoker, they put me on the 28th floor, which only let me
enjoy the creaking scary elevator for a longer period of time. The
floor of the hotel tilts alarmingly from side to side when the wind
blows (all the time in midtown). My room was about 8 feet by 8 feet,
with no desk, just a bed, an armoire, and a chair. The bathroom had
just enough room to stand up and run a straight-razor over one's
throat, which I have no doubt has been done many times before in these
rooms.

There was water, but no hot water. The hot water tap produced only a
mildly protesting trickle of lukewarm water, and adding cold to the
mix gave great pressure, if you like icicles forming in your crack.

Hey, if you're in NYC to see the shows on Broadway, this would be
great – all you really need is a place to crash, and for that, it's
fine. But for a business traveler, yeah right. Forget high-speed
internet access, I was lucky to be able to make simple voice phone
calls out. I finally gave up and used my cell phone, which
fortunately worked just fine. Local calls are a buck apiece, but you
have to examine the form hung thoughtfully in the elevator to find
that out - no clue about it in the room itself.

From my window, I could see blazing lights of Broadway, but it was as
viewed down an alley and past the Marriott, and all I could really see
was a giant TV screen running a short documentary on the sex life of a
badger. It got old, but now it is burned permanently into my retinas.
I have seen horrible things about badgers, make it stop.

On Monday morning, I had no trouble catching a cab to 56th and 8th,
cost was very reasonable – one of the best deals in NYC is cabs. I
found a nice restaurant catty-corner to the customer site called the
Park Café (next to Ben Ash deli) and I ate lunch there all week -
great cheeseburgers! I also found that the customer site was next
door to Carnegie Hall. Cool, I took some pictures of that.

The week went well, although I found it impossible to catch a cab back
to my hotel in the evenings, so it was mare's shank back to the hotel
– my dogs were barking short order. My wife, a native New Yorker,
tells me that one eventually gets used to this. OK, sure, I guess.
And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt. I spent my evenings flat
on my back in my crack hotel, watching grainy "Law & Order" reruns.

On Monday night, when I finished walking back to my hotel with my
laptop and stuffage in my backpack, I trudged up to my room, only to
find that the magnetic door key would not open the door. I went back
downstairs to the front desk, where they rekeyed my card and sent me
back up. No dice. I returned again, and they gave me a new card this
time. Still no dice. By now, my ears were popping from the
up-and-down 28 floors every ten minutes, and I was sweating like crazy
under my heavy leather coat. This time, I insisted that they send
somebody up with me to open the door. The security guard used his
magic key to open the door, and we discovered that the maid service
had not been in the room, either.

It turned out that I had turned the 'privacy' lock the night before -
as I usually do in a hotel room. But this privacy lock does not throw
a deadbolt - it just disconnects the outside locking mechanism card
reader thing. And it does not 'disengage' when you open the door from
the inside. So, I had left it 'on' and now it would not let anyone in
except the security guard. Great. I remembered to leave the stupid
thing turned 'off' from then on.

On Friday, the TV news had been forecasting heavy snow for NYC and
environs, and lo, it came to pass. By noon, the snow was falling
heavily. I finished up teaching my class at around 3 p.m. and grabbed
a cab to LaGuardia.

By now, the snow was falling heavily, so the cab ride took about 2
hours. But we finally made it – 60 dollars later. I checked into my
hotel, booted up my laptop, and checked my itinerary for my return the
following morning.

No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already. I called my travel agent – fortunately, she's in
California, so we had the time zone difference working for us. She
rebooked me on a later flight on AA out of LGA, but as a precaution,
she also booked me a one-way flight on Delta, FLT 1072. By 10 p.m. on
Friday night, both of these were cancelled as well.

I went to bed not knowing how I would get home. In the morning, I
called the front desk of the hotel and extended my stay by a day.
They wedged a special price up my rectal orifice and broke it off in
there, but I didn't care – the TV news had been showing pictures of
people sleeping in the airports on cots. Besides, the TSA has been in
there so often, I'm thinking of furnishing my ass with a couch and
renting it out to hitch-hikers. I was happy to pay whatever
ridiculous made-up price they wanted to charge to stay in comfort at
the hotel. There were lots of folks sleeping on cots at all three
major area airports.

I got on the phone with the various airlines – AA could get me out of
EWR on Sunday morning, Delta was talking about Tuesday. Lovely. I
told Delta to go pound snow up whatever was least enjoyable.

I spent Saturday in my nice warm toasty hotel, luxuriating in actual
hot water for the shower (no hot water in the Milford Plaza), and I
discovered that the Courtyard had a hidden coin-operated washer and
dryer, so the front desk gave me some laundry detergent and I washed
my dirty stinking clothes, just in case this snow problem continued.
By now, we had about 18 inches of snow on the ground in NYC, and snow
was beating Long Island like a gong.

On Sunday, I got up early and checked my AA flight home – cancelled.
I called AA and managed to get a flight on Sunday afternoon, FLT 1927
as I recall. It would leave EWR at 3:40 or so, get into ORD at 3:50
(time zone change), and then I'd have a 3 hour layover to FLT 340 (I
think) from ORD-ABQ, getting home around 9:15 p.m. Sunday night. I
went for that one.

Now, I had a scheduled flight from ABQ-PHX-MCI on Sunday at noon,
which I obviously was not going to make, seeing as how I was still in
Queens. This was my usual HP flight. I called HP and was told that
they could not just move my flight back a day to Monday. Oh no, I had
to cancel and buy another ticket. The amount we had already paid was
applied, and I owed another $500 out of my own pocket. Great. I'm
wearing a huge happy hat. See my grin? That's not a homicidal
grimace of pain, honest!

Funny – when the weather forces the airline to cancel flights, they
don't offer financial reimbursement – after all, they don't control
the weather. But when a passenger can't make a flight due to the same
weather and has to rebook, well, bend over Charlie, we got a present
for ya. Nice guys. I've got 100,000 miles on America West so far
this year, and this is the thanks I get. Well, nothing for it. I
whipped out my credit card and made that right. I had no trouble
rescheduling my hotel and rental car in Kansas City for Monday instead
of Sunday. Bravo for Marriott Courtyard and Hertz in Kansas City -
they didn't stick it to me.

I took a gypsy cab that the hotel laughingly called a limo from LGA to
EWR, only cost me $80 USD with tip and tolls. Grr, we never passed
through any tool booths, but I still had to pay ‘tolls'. The beat-up
old Continental had a sticker on the back that said "Peruvian Limo".
Whatever. I took my life in one hand and my manhood in the other and
got into the damned thing.

Got to EWR and checked in about noon for the scheduled 3:40 p.m.
flight. It was still scheduled, which was a good thing, but who knew
how things were going to go after that? Not much of a line at AA, but
AA also had correspondingly only put about 3 people on duty, so the
small line also moved very slowly. Most of the people in line were in
remarkably good moods, considering some of them had been sleeping on
cots in the airport for two or three days.

I got my boarding pass and my first surprise – the plane was a Fokker
F-100 and even though I had purchased a FC ticket, I was in cargo with
the rest of the plebes. Oh well, I had to get home. Take what I can
get, I guess.

I got lunch at the Burger King in the food court, and discovered
something that I had forgotten some time ago – everyone who works at
EWR hates people. Not a smile, not a ‘thank you,' nothing. "Service
with a grudge." Oh well, I was going home. I just smiled and kept
moving.

My flight departed a bit late, but at least I was in the air and out
of NYC! We landed at ORD only about an hour late. Glad I had a 3
hour layover.

However, my outgoing flight from ORD to ABQ was delayed about an hour
as well. So I went outside and smoke like a fiend for a couple of
hours. It was fun.

When I got back through security and to my gate, I discovered that AA
has a sense of humor after all. They have a ‘singing gate agent' who
was wandering from gate to gate (K concourse), grabbing the microphone
and regaling us all with slightly off-key renditions of gangsta-rap
versions of Christmas carols. Nice try – don't quit the day job.

We salamied into the tiny Fokker and got seated – I had a middle seat
in aisle 18 between two sumo wrestlers who were bulking up for the
fighting season. It was like trying to put toothpaste back into the
tube. It can be done, but it ain't a lot of fun.

That's when the nice FA announced that we had no pilot. We were
trying to get a pilot, but at the moment, we didn't have one. I just
gritted my teeth and wished for an automatic weapon and a satchel full
of fragmentation grenades.

We finally got a pilot – I guess they dropped a net on some poor
captain who thought he was going home. They announced it with great
glee – and asked us "Aren't you lucky? You actually have a pilot!"

"Yeah, bee-yotch," I'm thinking to myself. "You decide to honor your
freaking contractual obligation to us and we're lucky. We should be
thankful to your for doing your damned jobs." I just smiled, smushed
as I was between the sumos, who were both looking at me like I was
sushi.

We got into ABQ about 10 p.m. I had my checked luggage by 11 p.m.,
and my wife drove me home – I was destroyed. I unpacked my bag,
repacked it, did my timesheet, status report and expense report, and
went to bed – I was out cold by 1 a.m.

This morning, I got up at 5 a.m., had coffee, and stared into space
until 9 a.m., when I left for the airport to go to Kansas City. The
flight out of PHX was late.

But now I'm in Kansas City and all is good.

Ain't life a pip?

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

The Bill Mattocks wrote:
As an evil smoker, they put me on the 28th floor, which only let me
enjoy the creaking scary elevator for a longer period of time.

You get what you deserve :-)

You could have declared yourself a non-smoker and gotten a room on the 2nd
floor, and just walks out of hotel to smoke. Might have saved you a lot of time.

It turned out that I had turned the 'privacy' lock the night before -
as I usually do in a hotel room.

Wow, talk about bad design.

heavily. I finished up teaching my class at around 3 p.m. and grabbed
a cab to LaGuardia.

in hindsight, you could have taken the subway to 82 st Jackson Heights and
taken the bus to LGA (or a cab if there).

No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already.

I wonder if you could have taken Amtrak to Boston and beat the snow and arrive
Boston before cancellations began ?

In hindsight, you could also have taken an overnight train to chicago, arrive
saturday and catch a flight from there.

You could have taken the overnight train to Burlington Vermont which continues
as a bus to Montreal and catch a flight from there.

As always, wonderful story.


alec



The Bill Mattocks wrote:
Greetings faithful! Your intrepid road-warrior is here again. One
more week in the barrel of a gun aimed at the ******** of eternity,
and my head has been spinning around so rapidly it is coming
completely off my freaking neck.

nobody wrote in message ...
The Bill Mattocks wrote:
As an evil smoker, they put me on the 28th floor, which only let me
enjoy the creaking scary elevator for a longer period of time.

You get what you deserve :-)

As do we all.


You could have declared yourself a non-smoker and gotten a room on the 2nd
floor, and just walks out of hotel to smoke. Might have saved you a lot of time.

Much as I sometimes love to annoy anti-smokers, I try not to stink up
non-smoking hotel rooms. Now rental cars are another story...

It turned out that I had turned the 'privacy' lock the night before -
as I usually do in a hotel room.

Wow, talk about bad design.

Yeah, I was impressed!

heavily. I finished up teaching my class at around 3 p.m. and grabbed
a cab to LaGuardia.

in hindsight, you could have taken the subway to 82 st Jackson Heights and
taken the bus to LGA (or a cab if there).

If I knew Manhattan, sure. And if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my
uncle.

No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already.

I wonder if you could have taken Amtrak to Boston and beat the snow and arrive
Boston before cancellations began ?

Probably would have worked - but I still would have had to wait for my
first flight to be officially cancelled before the airline would have
worked with me to change my return without charging me.

In hindsight, you could also have taken an overnight train to chicago, arrive
saturday and catch a flight from there.

A bit esoteric, but yes.

You could have taken the overnight train to Burlington Vermont which continues
as a bus to Montreal and catch a flight from there.

LOL. Yeah. I suppose so. I even thought about renting a car and
driving to the nearest major city outside of the storm zone - like
Philly. But it still would have meant driving through Manhattan in
that snow.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

ah, Bill, we just have your best interests at heart...

"The Bill Mattocks" wrote in message
om...
nobody wrote in message
...
The Bill Mattocks wrote:
As an evil smoker, they put me on the 28th floor, which only let me
enjoy the creaking scary elevator for a longer period of time.

You get what you deserve :-)

As do we all.


You could have declared yourself a non-smoker and gotten a room on the
2nd
floor, and just walks out of hotel to smoke. Might have saved you a lot
of time.

Much as I sometimes love to annoy anti-smokers, I try not to stink up
non-smoking hotel rooms. Now rental cars are another story...

It turned out that I had turned the 'privacy' lock the night before -
as I usually do in a hotel room.

Wow, talk about bad design.

Yeah, I was impressed!

heavily. I finished up teaching my class at around 3 p.m. and grabbed
a cab to LaGuardia.

in hindsight, you could have taken the subway to 82 st Jackson Heights
and
taken the bus to LGA (or a cab if there).

If I knew Manhattan, sure. And if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my
uncle.

No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already.

I wonder if you could have taken Amtrak to Boston and beat the snow and
arrive
Boston before cancellations began ?

Probably would have worked - but I still would have had to wait for my
first flight to be officially cancelled before the airline would have
worked with me to change my return without charging me.

In hindsight, you could also have taken an overnight train to chicago,
arrive
saturday and catch a flight from there.

A bit esoteric, but yes.

You could have taken the overnight train to Burlington Vermont which
continues
as a bus to Montreal and catch a flight from there.

LOL. Yeah. I suppose so. I even thought about renting a car and
driving to the nearest major city outside of the storm zone - like
Philly. But it still would have meant driving through Manhattan in
that snow.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

nobody wrote in message ...
The Bill Mattocks wrote:
[snip]
No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already.

I wonder if you could have taken Amtrak to Boston and beat the snow and arrive
Boston before cancellations began ?

In hindsight, you could also have taken an overnight train to chicago, arrive
saturday and catch a flight from there.

You could have taken the overnight train to Burlington Vermont which continues
as a bus to Montreal and catch a flight from there.

Yeah, my thoughts too. As soon as I saw those original flights being
canceled, I probably would have watched the weather channel and headed
by ground in a favorable direction. He could probably have driven
to Cincinatti in a day.

Wow, Bill! What a trip!

I've had the misfortune of staying at the Milford Plaza. You make it sound
downright wonderful :-) I remember it being even worse.

Jeff
"The Bill Mattocks" wrote in message
om...
Greetings faithful! Your intrepid road-warrior is here again. One
more week in the barrel of a gun aimed at the ******** of eternity,
and my head has been spinning around so rapidly it is coming
completely off my freaking neck.

My satan-worshipping boss gave me a last-minute gig in midtown
Manhattan (that's New York City, you rubes), teaching a class from
December 1 to December 5. Well, the sun does not always shine on me,
and this time was no exception.

My travel agent informed me that there were very few flights to be had
into NYC for that time-frame, she was talking about flying me into
Philly or Baltimore, etc. To hell with that noise. Also, hotels were
at a premium. Midtown Manhattan is not the cheapest place on earth
when Christmas is not breathing down our necks like a drunk on a
three-day bender, and when the Christmas Spirit is upon those who live
in flyover country, they really seem to develop a yen to hie
themselves off to Broadway and view them thar neon lights. Hotels,
when available, run from $300 a night and up. Some of them were
quoting $1600 per night, and one was a spectacular $12,500 per night.
At those rates, damned right I'm stealing the towels. At those
prices, I'll steam off the wallpaper and roll up the damned carpet
when I check out.

My company, whose management are all apparently on crack, has a
company policy of $150 per night, tops. Regardless of locality. Oh
yeah, that was going to work out well.

My travel agent finally came through with a round-trip on AA for $800;
ABQ-ORD-LGA and back. It was all that was left - a first-class seat.
Darn. Guess I'll have to take it, but don't I wish I could ride in
coach?

My company wanted me to save money on a hotel by staying in Weehawken,
New Jersey and taking the ferry across every morning (never rent a car
in Manhattan). I could not feature that, so I spent the weekend
before the trip looking around online. My travel agent recommended
that I try a bucketshop like hotels.com, as all the available hotels
had been turned over to consolidators by then and she could no longer
get me a hotel room at all. Lovely. Oh yeah, there was a 'boutique'
B&B in Chelsea. No smoking. Can you see me staying there? Me,
neither.

So, my first experience with hotels.com, and I guess I could say it
worked out ok. Kind of. Mostly. Got a hotel at the 'Milford Plaza'
hotel on 45th between 7th and 8th, and I was to work at a customer
site on 56th and 8th. Hmmm, only 11 blocks. Yeah, I could do that.
Price was $129 for the first night, going up every night to $399 on
Thursday night. That's life in NYC, folks. I went for it. Thing is,
with hotels.com, you have to pay upfront, and there are no refunds.
OK, in for a penny, in for a pound. I got a room at the Marriott
Courtyard at LGA for Friday night, had a return flight booked for
early Saturday morning, and I didn't feature hotfooting across
Manhattan early on Saturday morning to Queens.

The flight in was fine - I got the first class seats for both legs
outbound (AA FLT 2064 and 350). Let me tell you, FC on AA Super 80's
is quite nice. Just like the 'old days' with hot towels, good eats,
and so on. That was the beginning and the end of the luxury
treatment.

My first inkling that I was actually arriving in hell in the summer
season was the arrival at LGA. Ah, summer in hell. Great beach, just
no water. Got my checked bag with no problem, and then stood in line
for a taxi for about an hour. People pushing, shoving, cutting in
line and being threatened with violence by pushees. Gypsy cab drivers
literally pulling people out of line, grabbing their bags and walking
off with them so the poor out-of-towner had no choice but to follow
them. Whew! Welcome to New York - I kept my hand on my bags.

Got into my hotel - let me tell you about the lovely Milford Plaza.
Built in the early stone age, this monstrosity is both old and ugly.
As an evil smoker, they put me on the 28th floor, which only let me
enjoy the creaking scary elevator for a longer period of time. The
floor of the hotel tilts alarmingly from side to side when the wind
blows (all the time in midtown). My room was about 8 feet by 8 feet,
with no desk, just a bed, an armoire, and a chair. The bathroom had
just enough room to stand up and run a straight-razor over one's
throat, which I have no doubt has been done many times before in these
rooms.

There was water, but no hot water. The hot water tap produced only a
mildly protesting trickle of lukewarm water, and adding cold to the
mix gave great pressure, if you like icicles forming in your crack.

Hey, if you're in NYC to see the shows on Broadway, this would be
great - all you really need is a place to crash, and for that, it's
fine. But for a business traveler, yeah right. Forget high-speed
internet access, I was lucky to be able to make simple voice phone
calls out. I finally gave up and used my cell phone, which
fortunately worked just fine. Local calls are a buck apiece, but you
have to examine the form hung thoughtfully in the elevator to find
that out - no clue about it in the room itself.

From my window, I could see blazing lights of Broadway, but it was as
viewed down an alley and past the Marriott, and all I could really see
was a giant TV screen running a short documentary on the sex life of a
badger. It got old, but now it is burned permanently into my retinas.
I have seen horrible things about badgers, make it stop.

On Monday morning, I had no trouble catching a cab to 56th and 8th,
cost was very reasonable - one of the best deals in NYC is cabs. I
found a nice restaurant catty-corner to the customer site called the
Park Café (next to Ben Ash deli) and I ate lunch there all week -
great cheeseburgers! I also found that the customer site was next
door to Carnegie Hall. Cool, I took some pictures of that.

The week went well, although I found it impossible to catch a cab back
to my hotel in the evenings, so it was mare's shank back to the hotel
- my dogs were barking short order. My wife, a native New Yorker,
tells me that one eventually gets used to this. OK, sure, I guess.
And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt. I spent my evenings flat
on my back in my crack hotel, watching grainy "Law & Order" reruns.

On Monday night, when I finished walking back to my hotel with my
laptop and stuffage in my backpack, I trudged up to my room, only to
find that the magnetic door key would not open the door. I went back
downstairs to the front desk, where they rekeyed my card and sent me
back up. No dice. I returned again, and they gave me a new card this
time. Still no dice. By now, my ears were popping from the
up-and-down 28 floors every ten minutes, and I was sweating like crazy
under my heavy leather coat. This time, I insisted that they send
somebody up with me to open the door. The security guard used his
magic key to open the door, and we discovered that the maid service
had not been in the room, either.

It turned out that I had turned the 'privacy' lock the night before -
as I usually do in a hotel room. But this privacy lock does not throw
a deadbolt - it just disconnects the outside locking mechanism card
reader thing. And it does not 'disengage' when you open the door from
the inside. So, I had left it 'on' and now it would not let anyone in
except the security guard. Great. I remembered to leave the stupid
thing turned 'off' from then on.

On Friday, the TV news had been forecasting heavy snow for NYC and
environs, and lo, it came to pass. By noon, the snow was falling
heavily. I finished up teaching my class at around 3 p.m. and grabbed
a cab to LaGuardia.

By now, the snow was falling heavily, so the cab ride took about 2
hours. But we finally made it - 60 dollars later. I checked into my
hotel, booted up my laptop, and checked my itinerary for my return the
following morning.

No dice, chums. I was scheduled to fly out on AA FLT 721, and it was
cancelled already. I called my travel agent - fortunately, she's in
California, so we had the time zone difference working for us. She
rebooked me on a later flight on AA out of LGA, but as a precaution,
she also booked me a one-way flight on Delta, FLT 1072. By 10 p.m. on
Friday night, both of these were cancelled as well.

I went to bed not knowing how I would get home. In the morning, I
called the front desk of the hotel and extended my stay by a day.
They wedged a special price up my rectal orifice and broke it off in
there, but I didn't care - the TV news had been showing pictures of
people sleeping in the airports on cots. Besides, the TSA has been in
there so often, I'm thinking of furnishing my ass with a couch and
renting it out to hitch-hikers. I was happy to pay whatever
ridiculous made-up price they wanted to charge to stay in comfort at
the hotel. There were lots of folks sleeping on cots at all three
major area airports.

I got on the phone with the various airlines - AA could get me out of
EWR on Sunday morning, Delta was talking about Tuesday. Lovely. I
told Delta to go pound snow up whatever was least enjoyable.

I spent Saturday in my nice warm toasty hotel, luxuriating in actual
hot water for the shower (no hot water in the Milford Plaza), and I
discovered that the Courtyard had a hidden coin-operated washer and
dryer, so the front desk gave me some laundry detergent and I washed
my dirty stinking clothes, just in case this snow problem continued.
By now, we had about 18 inches of snow on the ground in NYC, and snow
was beating Long Island like a gong.

On Sunday, I got up early and checked my AA flight home - cancelled.
I called AA and managed to get a flight on Sunday afternoon, FLT 1927
as I recall. It would leave EWR at 3:40 or so, get into ORD at 3:50
(time zone change), and then I'd have a 3 hour layover to FLT 340 (I
think) from ORD-ABQ, getting home around 9:15 p.m. Sunday night. I
went for that one.

Now, I had a scheduled flight from ABQ-PHX-MCI on Sunday at noon,
which I obviously was not going to make, seeing as how I was still in
Queens. This was my usual HP flight. I called HP and was told that
they could not just move my flight back a day to Monday. Oh no, I had
to cancel and buy another ticket. The amount we had already paid was
applied, and I owed another $500 out of my own pocket. Great. I'm
wearing a huge happy hat. See my grin? That's not a homicidal
grimace of pain, honest!

Funny - when the weather forces the airline to cancel flights, they
don't offer financial reimbursement - after all, they don't control
the weather. But when a passenger can't make a flight due to the same
weather and has to rebook, well, bend over Charlie, we got a present
for ya. Nice guys. I've got 100,000 miles on America West so far
this year, and this is the thanks I get. Well, nothing for it. I
whipped out my credit card and made that right. I had no trouble
rescheduling my hotel and rental car in Kansas City for Monday instead
of Sunday. Bravo for Marriott Courtyard and Hertz in Kansas City -
they didn't stick it to me.

I took a gypsy cab that the hotel laughingly called a limo from LGA to
EWR, only cost me $80 USD with tip and tolls. Grr, we never passed
through any tool booths, but I still had to pay 'tolls'. The beat-up
old Continental had a sticker on the back that said "Peruvian Limo".
Whatever. I took my life in one hand and my manhood in the other and
got into the damned thing.

Got to EWR and checked in about noon for the scheduled 3:40 p.m.
flight. It was still scheduled, which was a good thing, but who knew
how things were going to go after that? Not much of a line at AA, but
AA also had correspondingly only put about 3 people on duty, so the
small line also moved very slowly. Most of the people in line were in
remarkably good moods, considering some of them had been sleeping on
cots in the airport for two or three days.

I got my boarding pass and my first surprise - the plane was a Fokker
F-100 and even though I had purchased a FC ticket, I was in cargo with
the rest of the plebes. Oh well, I had to get home. Take what I can
get, I guess.

I got lunch at the Burger King in the food court, and discovered
something that I had forgotten some time ago - everyone who works at
EWR hates people. Not a smile, not a 'thank you,' nothing. "Service
with a grudge." Oh well, I was going home. I just smiled and kept
moving.

My flight departed a bit late, but at least I was in the air and out
of NYC! We landed at ORD only about an hour late. Glad I had a 3
hour layover.

However, my outgoing flight from ORD to ABQ was delayed about an hour
as well. So I went outside and smoke like a fiend for a couple of
hours. It was fun.

When I got back through security and to my gate, I discovered that AA
has a sense of humor after all. They have a 'singing gate agent' who
was wandering from gate to gate (K concourse), grabbing the microphone
and regaling us all with slightly off-key renditions of gangsta-rap
versions of Christmas carols. Nice try - don't quit the day job.

We salamied into the tiny Fokker and got seated - I had a middle seat
in aisle 18 between two sumo wrestlers who were bulking up for the
fighting season. It was like trying to put toothpaste back into the
tube. It can be done, but it ain't a lot of fun.

That's when the nice FA announced that we had no pilot. We were
trying to get a pilot, but at the moment, we didn't have one. I just
gritted my teeth and wished for an automatic weapon and a satchel full
of fragmentation grenades.

We finally got a pilot - I guess they dropped a net on some poor
captain who thought he was going home. They announced it with great
glee - and asked us "Aren't you lucky? You actually have a pilot!"

"Yeah, bee-yotch," I'm thinking to myself. "You decide to honor your
freaking contractual obligation to us and we're lucky. We should be
thankful to your for doing your damned jobs." I just smiled, smushed
as I was between the sumos, who were both looking at me like I was
sushi.

We got into ABQ about 10 p.m. I had my checked luggage by 11 p.m.,
and my wife drove me home - I was destroyed. I unpacked my bag,
repacked it, did my timesheet, status report and expense report, and
went to bed - I was out cold by 1 a.m.

This morning, I got up at 5 a.m., had coffee, and stared into space
until 9 a.m., when I left for the airport to go to Kansas City. The
flight out of PHX was late.

But now I'm in Kansas City and all is good.

Ain't life a pip?

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

The Bill Mattocks wrote:
nobody wrote in message ...

The Bill Mattocks wrote:


LOL. Yeah. I suppose so. I even thought about renting a car and
driving to the nearest major city outside of the storm zone - like
Philly. But it still would have meant driving through Manhattan in
that snow.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

Philly would not have helped. Philly was a mess too!


alec

On 8 Dec 2003 20:55:57 -0800 (The Bill Mattocks) wrote:

:Greetings faithful! Your intrepid road-warrior is here again. One
:more week in the barrel of a gun aimed at the ******** of eternity,
:and my head has been spinning around so rapidly it is coming
:completely off my freaking neck.

:My satan-worshipping boss gave me a last-minute gig in midtown
:Manhattan (that's New York City, you rubes), teaching a class from
:December 1 to December 5. Well, the sun does not always shine on me,
:and this time was no exception.

:My travel agent informed me that there were very few flights to be had
:into NYC for that time-frame, she was talking about flying me into
:Philly or Baltimore, etc. To hell with that noise. Also, hotels were
:at a premium. Midtown Manhattan is not the cheapest place on earth
:when Christmas is not breathing down our necks like a drunk on a
:three-day bender, and when the Christmas Spirit is upon those who live
:in flyover country, they really seem to develop a yen to hie
:themselves off to Broadway and view them thar neon lights. Hotels,
:when available, run from $300 a night and up. Some of them were
:quoting $1600 per night, and one was a spectacular $12,500 per night.
:At those rates, damned right I'm stealing the towels. At those
:prices, I'll steam off the wallpaper and roll up the damned carpet
:when I check out.

:My company, whose management are all apparently on crack, has a
:company policy of $150 per night, tops. Regardless of locality. Oh
:yeah, that was going to work out well.

I really don't understand your depth of being a company man.

If there aren't any reasonable hotels at your companies per diem, tell them.
You should not have to make the choice of spending your own money or sleeping
on a park bench.

If they do not make enough from the class to pay for expenses, they should not
offer the class.

--
Binyamin Dissen
http://www.dissensoftware.com

(The Bill Mattocks) wrote in message . com...
My company wanted me to save money on a hotel by staying in Weehawken,
New Jersey and taking the ferry across every morning (never rent a car
in Manhattan). I could not feature that, so I spent the weekend
before the trip looking around online. My travel agent recommended
that I try a bucketshop like hotels.com, as all the available hotels
had been turned over to consolidators by then and she could no longer
get me a hotel room at all. Lovely. Oh yeah, there was a 'boutique'
B&B in Chelsea. No smoking. Can you see me staying there? Me,
neither.

I don't know about Weehawken, but the Jersey City waterfront has some
pretty good hotels (with great views!) for good prices, and both ferry
and subway (PATH) connections into Manhattan. Sure, it's a touch
further from midtown than you'd like to be, but we were very impressed
when we stayed there. (There's a Doubletree, a Hyatt and an
extended-stay place called Candlewood Suites that we really
enjoyed...)