It was time to begin traveling to the land where I could terrorize kangaroos. Angie and I took a taxi to the airport and arrived well before the flight was scheduled to leave. This was primarily due to not having checked luggage in a long time, never having checked luggage outside of the country, and my own paranoia around being on-time.
While sitting at the gate the plane pulls up, and passengers disembark. We wait, and wait, and wait for the boarding call. Eventually the gate attendants come on the overheads and say that there has been a mechanical malfunction, and the plane needs to go back to the garage. All of the passengers watch in dismay as the plane pulls away from the gate.
Around forty-five minutes later the plane returns, with the gate thanking us for our patience. We board. We listen to the safety announcements. We pull out to the runway. We sit with the engines running.
After about thirty minutes of just sitting there the captain announces that the onboard computer has a minor error message. He says the plane’s manual says to perform a number of steps to clear the message. This is what they’ve been up to for the last thirty minutes with no success. Next on the troubleshooting list is… wait for it… shut the plane down, and turn it back on again. I wonder to myself, which version of Windows the plane is running. And of course FAA regulations state that we can’t do this where we’re at of course, we need to do this at the gate. Back to the gate we go.
Angie and I are becoming anxious as our window of time to transfer to our next flight is shrinking by the minute. After sitting at the gate for around ten minutes we decide to get off and see about possibly getting another connecting flight. Turns out, everyone is bailing to the next flight from PDX to LAX. When we finally make it to the desk he moves us onto the next fight. Minutes later as we’re boarding the next flight we hear that the other flight has been canceled.
We take off, in the new plane, without any weirdness. Two hours later we land in LAX and literally run to the terminal connector shuttle. This takes us, at a pace slower than walking speed, from the domestic terminal we landed at to the international terminal. Once there we run again to our next gate with only minutes to spare. As we round the corner they’re calling our row to board.
Safe at last, and the only worry in our head is if our baggage has also completed the trip. This is only a worry because the captain of this flight apologies for the delay because someone who checked luggage never made it to the plane.