It has now been twice that I have travel to DC for my job. Twice in one year. I'm not complaining at all. I have gotten to the point now where the experience has helped me learn how to efficiently plan for that type of trip. Most of it learned from my first excursion there. Which is why this time around I went with carry-on instead of checking my luggage and scheduled direct flights instead of connecting flights. However, I still had to resort to dealing with Delta again. But you would think with the changes that I made that I wouldn't run into any problems again, right? Keep in mind this is Delta that we're talking about.
I purposely scheduled my departing flight for as late as reasonably possible. I wanted it to be late enough that I could get my business done in DC yet still get home to get some recovery time in. That happy medium turned out to be a 6:15 flight. I locked it in when I booked the flight three weeks ago. Keep that "three weeks ago" timeframe in mind as it will be key point of contention later on.
My meeting was went longer than I expected which was actually a good thing. I thought we would be finished by noon but it actually lasted to almost 2pm. I had already checked out my hotel to avoid paying for two nights so it's not like I could have went there. I had planned all along to go directly to the airport from the meeting. I knew it would have me there hours before my flight I arrived; however, I also knew how DC traffic was. It could take thirty minutes to travel a mile. I may have overestimated the airport trip though. It only took thirty minutes to get there.
So I'm sitting at the airport with a good 3+ hours before my flight was scheduled for departure. I was there so early that they didn't even have it showing on the "Departures" board yet. I'm not going to lie though, that had me a little rattled at first. I was thinking that maybe it got canceled for some reason which is why it wasn't showing up there. Nope. Some life-size Buddha-looking brotha informed me that they probably just hadn't posted it yet. By the time I grabbed a bite and changed out of my suit, it was finally showing on the board.
One look at that monster line at the security checkpoint reminded me of why it was a good thing to get there early. I was being uncharacteristically patient for the slow moving line while other folks that were late for their flights started getting a little antsy. Maybe if they had planned a little better they could have been a lot less stressed. Or perhaps if they would have chose "Elite" or "First Class" for their travel option they could have circumvented the longer lines like I noticed security was allowing some people to do. I still don't understand that. Flying first class on Delta is about the same as calling shotgun in a minivan: you have a better seat, but you're still stuck in a minivan.
The TSA agent working the security checkpoint was living proof that they apparently only require a pulse as a qualification to work there. A guy handed her his boarding pass and his ID. The boarding pass had the name William and his ID had the name Bill. She struggled with that for the longest because the names didn't match. She asked him if Bill was a nickname because she had never seen Bill used for William. She had seen Willie and Will, but never Will. She was dead serious too. How do you not know that Bill is short for William and you're in a job where you see a variety of names every single day? I guess that's something they don't test for on the GED.
It always amazed me that they actually named an entire airport after Ronald Reagan. Until I spent more time in it and realized how much that airport actually sucked. Like their WiFi for instance. $5.99 for a couple of hours didn't seem too unreasonable. Especially given the fact that I would be there for longer than that. So I bit the bullet only to find out that it is the most unreliable WiFi ever. I've seen dial-up that worked better than their WiFi did. Chalk up yet another thing to a lesson learned for things to avoid in the future.
The time finally got closer to my 6:15 departure. Shortly after 5, I heard my name being paged by the gate associate. Something told me it couldn't possibly be anything good. The elderly gentleman politely informed me that I didn't have a seat assignment and had been placed on stand-by because the flight was full. I was baffled. I had purchased the ticket three weeks ago...checked in almost four hours early and I'M the one that got put on stand-by?! They were really trying to make me lose my mind up in that place.
I calmly sat in one of those uncomfortable terminal seats as I watched everyone else board the plane. How in the world was a flight from DC to Des Moines that packed on a Thursday night anyway? Why would that many people be wanting to leave DC for Des Moines on a weeknight? It should be the other way around. I could have continued to wait but I was getting impatient. I asked the same guy again about my seat as the last of the passengers were boarding. They had gotten a volunteer to take another flight so I had a seat afterall. Well wasn't that nice of them? I guess that's what I get for trying to plan ahead.
