So Much for That Voucher

ATA Airlines Shuts Down After Filing for Bankruptcy Protection

Based on their inability to get me to Kona on March 17th, I think have an insight into why they've utterly failed.

I arrived in Oakland at 4 PM (from LAX) with a little time to kill before my scheduled 6:15 flight to Kona, so I wandered around a bit before going to the gate and asking to be put in an exit row, whereupon I learned that the flight was delayed until 10 PM. Six hours in the Oakland airport! What fun. I read a couple books (the Warriors series, borrowed from my little sister -- they're good enough that I've started on the next 6-book series) and then started looking around to see if one of the shops would sell me a Nintendo DS or something. None were available, which seems stupid, since I was prepared to buy one, and I'm not nearly as impulsive as most other people.

Anyway, I walked around the airport 500 times, got my $10 food voucher from the airline, and waited with mounting anticipation as our boarding time approached. And then, another delay. Until 11 PM. That's when I started to fear that we were on the Road of One Thousand Successive Delays Leading Inexorably to Cancellation (which is also, incidentally, the name of a really great Mah Jongg hand).

Sure enough, at eleven, we were pushed back to midnight, and then to 2 AM. As you can imagine, the natives were getting pretty restless by now, with several macho a-holes hovering around the gate agent and helpfully reminding her every five seconds that they were paying customers who really really wanted to get on an airplane. My blood pressure goes up just thinking about these people. SHUT UP STUPID PEOPLE. I would like to put a couple swear words in there, but this is a family blog. Anyway, I put a shirt over my face and tried to get a little shut-eye before, you know, the flight was cancelled. Which it finally was, at 2:30, because a flight attendant had called in sick and they couldn't fly without a full crew.

Cue the seething mob! I am proud to say that I was second in line, by which I mean that there was a mosh pit around the podium with a nice orderly line forming behind it, and I was second in the nice orderly line. Everyone could feel the waves of righteousness coming off of me, I'm sure.

OK, we all know this story, right? We've all been to the airport (except one of my relatives, but I don't want to embarrass my dad by naming him specifically), we've all had flights get cancelled and been surrounded by morons who think the gate agent is in charge of scheduling and plane maintenance and who lives and who dies. So it's not like this is some kind of unique tale so far. But I haven't gotten to the good part.

Normally, at this point, everyone gets put on different flights. ATA's Kona flights were booked for the next 10 days, so we were all going to have to be booked with some other airline(s) to get there. Not unusual. I don't know how they usually deal with this process -- usually the gate agent works his/her magic, occasionally saying things to placate the masses, and then gives out everyone's new flight info, and that's that. It might take a little while, but it doesn't seem complicated. They have procedures for these things.

I'm trying to give the gate agent the benefit of the doubt here and say that it's ATA's fault she had to do things this way, but it might just have been poor training and the fact that no one else who knows anything is working at 2:30 AM. In any case, the agent got on the phone, and this is roughly what I heard of her side of the conversation.

I need to book some passengers on a flight to Kona. How much room do you have in coach?

I have 160 people.

One hundred and sixty.

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY.

ATA.

A - T - A.

Can I talk to your supervisor?

[More discussion of how many people she was trying to book]

There's no credit card. I'm rebooking passengers from ATA.

A - T - A.

One at a time...? There are ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY PEOPLE.

From all this, I was starting to get the impression that she had called United's reservations line. I'm not sure how airlines usually rebook passengers on other airlines, but... I'm pretty sure they don't do it THAT way. Eventually, she managed to straighten a couple things out, and started rebooking us in groups of nine. She did this by taking each person's boarding pass, reading his/her name into the phone, spelling it, spelling it again, spelling it again, acknowledging to the person on the phone that the passenger did indeed have an unusual name, reading a confirmation number, and reading it again. Needless to say, this meant that it was taking well over a minute to rebook each person, and only one agent was working on this. You do the math.

This was making the natives EXTREMELY restless, to the point where they called in six actual police officers to stand by the podium. No one was being violent, but it did seem prudent. Since the mosh pit refused to be assimilated into the orderly line, it was quite a long time before the agent even got to the line. The righteous line-people were remarkably patient, although the lady at the very end did lose it at one point and rush the podium, demanding to know why she had to be last. Well... hate to say it, since no one wants to be last... but someone has to be last. Some amount of glaring from the line-people seemed to communicate this to her.

Things did speed up, and I had my new booking after about an hour -- for a United flight leaving at 8:40 AM from SFO. They were giving out vouchers for a hotel and a cab ride. The cab voucher was essentially a blank check to get us out of Oakland, and they had announced that the hotel voucher was for the Crowne Plaza near SFO. I decided that the hotel was pointless, since it would pretty much just get me a shower and a 1-hour nap before I had to get to the airport again, so I went straight to SFO (an $80 fare). There were plenty of people who sounded interested in the hotel option, so off they went to the Crowne Plaza. Thanks, ATA!

Except.... the vouchers weren't for the Crowne Plaza. They were for a Best Western, which you would only know if you happened to call the phone number on the voucher. I groan in sympathy for all the people who did not call the number and arrived at the CP to find blank stares and no available rooms.

As for those of us who went straight to SFO, we were greeted by a phalanx of United agents who were waiting just for us. They were so fast! And nice! And I was assigned a seat in Economy Plus! And.... once I got to the gate.... they had those seats that are arranged in sets of four with NO ARMRESTS between them. Only people who have been awake for 38 hours can truly appreciate those seats. And we did, my friends. It looked like a hobo camp at that gate.

So, in the end, we all made to Kona on a real airline, each with a voucher for a free round-trip domestic or international ATA flight. What a nice gesture. I've already redeemed it by folding it into a paper airplane and flying it across the backyard! Thanks, ATA!

They're Watching

Apparently, all those "paranoid" "delusions" I've been having -- you know, the ones where I'm being secretly photographed while going about my daily activities -- aren't completely unfounded! I knew it!

Alaskanmama sent me a message last night entitled "You're a Google STAR!" And inside were these three screenshots:






Soren and I have been immortalized (in internet terms) on Google Maps Street View!!!!!!!! Freaking sweet! Apparently I was zoning out on that particular walk, and missed the car driving by with the big 360-degree camera mounted on top. I was probably looking at a really fascinating pile of moose poop at the time.

It's so exciting to be in Street View! Even if it is some random corner of Anchorage that no one will ever look at (except Alaskanmama, apparently). You can see the pictures by going to maps.google.com and typing in "1786 Scenic Way, Anchorage, AK", then clicking on the Street View link, and then rotating the view counterclockwise a couple times. And then, assuming I know you as well as I think I do, you will type in your own address and look for yourself.

This Post Brought to You by Kona Coffee

We got back from our travels a few days ago -- Soren and I spent some time in Santa Barbara while Chris did workshop stuff in Honolulu, and then I flew out to Kona and hung out with my hubby while Gramma, Grampa Richie and Auntie Kelly Ann (hereafter known as "The Goldens" because I can't be typing all those names all the time) took care of Soren for a few days. The trip had its ups and downs, but on the whole, it was great!

Chris flew with us as far as LAX, and was nice enough to let me use his first-class upgrade while he sat with Soren in Peasant Plus class. Have I mentioned that I love Chris? Because I do.

Soren and I had a great time in SB, enjoying the disgustingly nice weather. Gramma got out all the awesome old Fisher-Price toys she'd been hanging on to since 1977 (you know, back when Little People were still a choking hazard), and Soren was in heaven. OK, as an aside, remember how you used to be able to wind toys up? Why don't they do that any more? One of the toys Mom held on to was the Fisher-Price record player, and I got it down and was like, Oh, there's no way the batteries in this are still good, but then I remembered that you're supposed to wind it up! And then it goes! Only for thirty seconds, but who cares? If you want your toys to make annoying noises, you should have to work for it. Not like the big garbage truck Soren has, with the lever you can push down to make the horn honk CONTINUOUSLY FOREVER. Anyway, I'm sure Big Battery has the toy companies in its pocket, but I'd like to see a return to good old-fashioned winding up. </aside>

The Hess family was nice enough to have us over for dinner and give us some of Liam's old clothes, which was wonderful! Then Emily came over and gave Soren an awesome Sock Monster (I'll have to take a better picture of it one of these days) before we went to a lovely brunch featuring the hugest mimosas in the entire world. Sadly, this brings us to one of the lower points of the trip, which was the stomach bug that Soren had had a couple nights before, which then manifested in me after brunch, and which apparently I later passed on to Emily and Kelly Ann. And now Chris has it. So don't come near me, I guess.

Let's talk more about fun things, though. The Goldens hosted an Easter party, with egg decorating and egg hunting and candy! Soren even found a couple eggs before deciding that it was more fun to play with trucks!



And he had his first ride on a carousel! He was a little nervous, but managed to have some fun. When asked if he wanted to ride again, his answer was a prompt "No," but I'm sure he'll warm up to it.



He also got to run around making airplane noises with Grampa Richie and Kelly Ann...



And he gave Gramma some very nice kisses.



That's enough for now. In my next post: Why I will forever hereafter stick to flying REAL airlines; humuhumunukunukuapua'a, palila, and akiapola'au; and molten lava.

Wanted: Shower

Alternative title: Boring Crap about Water Heaters

Boy, the outpouring of personal secrets in my last post was just exhausting! Or maybe it was the romantic evening Chris and I spent on Sunday, cleaning wet boxes out of the basement because it turned out that there was a fair bit of water down there, and we thought it was flooding from all the rain we'd just had, but then we figured out that our water heater wasn't so much storing water as just giving it a place to rest on its journey to the floor, so we're getting a new water heater installed today. Sadly, we're not going tankless, because emergency water heater replacement isn't really the time to switch systems, but it would probably be prudent to schedule a tankless installation for March 11th, 2017, if everything I hear about water heaters' life spans is true.

The water heater at our house in Providence was over 40 years old. They just don't make 'em like they used to. On the other hand, they invented "efficiency" sometime in the last 40 years, so it probably would have been worth replacing.

For the Soren groupies out there, here's his latest milestone: forgetting people's names! Seth came over for dinner on Sunday, and Soren kept calling him "Steven" (he even told me that he wanted Steven to come over the next day). We had some friends over last night, and Soren kept calling their daughter "Molly" (her name is Brooke). I think there's a Molly in the preschool group at his day care, but I don't know any Stevens, so I don't know where he got that one.

Sorry about the boring post. Maybe we'll take a big trip to California tomorrow, just to liven things up. And then maybe I'll leave Soren in the capable hands of Gramma while I fly out to meet Chris in Hawaii. Yeah, that sounds good.

I'm It

I've been tagged with my first meme by alaskanmama! So exciting. And yet so time-consuming. And so I present: Five Things You Don't Know About Me (unless you're Chris).

I have a soundtrack.

I always have a song in my head. Every waking moment of every day. Right now, it's playing "Dock on the Bay," which is not that interesting because I heard that song earlier today, but I will more often than not wake up with a song in my head, and I have no idea where it comes from. Like "Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting." Why would any sane person wake up with that song in her head? Oh. Right. "Sane".

I hate The Mole.

Not the TV show, silly -- everyone knows I love THAT. I'm talking about the one on my chin. Good ol' Mom always used to call it my "beauty mark," which was nice, but I'm tired of it and I want to get rid of it.

I <3 unicorns.

And horses, and ponies. Even though I am not ten years old. I used to full-on believe in unicorns when I was younger, thanks to the gorgeous book Unicorns I Have Known, and it was a sad day when I realized those unicorns weren't real. I still love looking at pretty horses and ponies (and Chris will tell you that I ask for a pony several times a week, mostly in jest), and a couple of my favorite books are about unicorns: The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle, and the Firebringer Trilogy, by Meredith Ann Pierce (reviewed earlier in this blog). Unicorns are pretty. Shut up.

I want to start collecting things.

But the things I want to collect are weird. Most of you know that I love birdwatching, but I also have a thing for taxidermied birds. Hey, they're pretty, and they don't fly away. I'm just not sure there's an appropriate place in my home to put taxidermy. And the other collection I'd like to start is creepy war posters. They're such powerful images -- I'm fascinated by them. This collection should probably wait until there aren't any impressionable young children in the house any more.

I call myself an artist, but...

...I haven't worked on a painting in five years, if you don't count things I've done for work. Those little drawings I did for Soren over the summer are the only bit of "personal" art I've done since 2003. I want to paint and draw, I really do, but I feel like I'm completely out of ideas. Maybe I just need to look at the art of others to inspire me, maybe I need more time to think, I don't know.


Well, that's my five things... that took way too long. Now I will tag others! Megh! Mika! Emily! Christi or Adam or both! Tell me something I don't know.

More Art

...and here's Daddy's birthday card!

Soren's latest work

Here's a fine example of Soren's art. He was experimenting with the "pound the marker on the paper" technique in this particular work.