Guess who’s in California again

A story about travel, hijacking and homicidal Toyotas....

Once again I’m in California visiting my 96-year-old mother before one of us kicks the bucket and I see no reason to assume the bucket-kicker will be her. One of us has shown she has what it takes to survive more than nine-and-a-half decades, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, World War 2 and the release of Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits Album and it isn’t me.

As usual, planning and taking a trip resulted in some stories worth telling and as I’ve pointed out before, good stories do not start with: “The plane was on time and they didn’t lose our luggage.”

Bad experiences make good stories and here’s what I’ve got so far.

Buying the plane ticket

These days we have to be our own travel agent and I put together a trip that had me leaving Kansas City at a reasonable time in the morning, but since airline scheduling now seems to be done by inebriated monkeys throwing darts at a calendar, the airline felt free to change my reasonable departure time and push it up to 6 AM.

They now recommend you arrive two hours early just in case they need to check your fillings, do a DNA test and a body cavity search, which means arriving at 4 AM to make a 6 AM flight and I quickly realized there would be no point in going to sleep Thursday night. The airline’s email apologized if the time change was “inconvenient” and it seems to me the only person who wouldn’t find it inconvenient is named Dracula.  

The airline also felt free to change my connecting flight.

As you might already be aware, the U.S. Constitution now mandates that no domestic flight be non-stop and if you want to fly from Kansas City to St. Louis (which I once did and I swear to God the plane never flew level, it just climbed to its cruising altitude and then immediately started descending) you now have to connect through Atlanta, Georgia or Nome, Alaska or Angkor Wat, Cambodia, whichever one is less convenient.

My original connecting city was Phoenix, Arizona which is kinda sorta in the same direction as Sacramento, California, but the airline changed it to El Paso, Texas which is pretty much like deciding you want to go to Seattle, Washington and starting your trip by heading directly to Key West, Florida.

You-ain’t-gonna-believe-this-shit alert

Going to Sacramento, California by way of El Paso, Texas seemed incredibly inconvenient and just for grins I wondered what would happen if I actually wanted to go to El Paso, Texas so I got on the airline’s website and looked it up and the first Kansas City to El Paso flight connected through Phoenix.    

So if you want to go directly to El Paso, you should start by booking a flight to Sacramento and then get off the plane when it stops in Texas.

Which sounds like a brilliant plan except I once had a connecting flight in Pittsburgh and I’d never been to Pittsburgh and had a brief moment where I thought Pittsburgh sounded way more fun than where I was actually headed – Angkor Wat, Cambodia – and asked the stewardess what would happen if I just got off the airplane in Pittsburgh and she reacted like a pulled a gun and asked to be taken to Havana, Cuba.

(And I’m just now realizing all those hijackers were frustrated travelers who could not find a direct flight.)

The stewardess told me that getting off the plane early would result in the airline canceling my return trip, so while it’s a pretty screwed-up system, the airlines insist you use it or hitchhike.

And about that hijacking…

So I’m going through security in Kansas City and get stopped and they tell me they have to search my backpack and after they do, a security guard tells me the problem was a harmonica, but the security guard said the X-ray of my harmonica made it look like an ammunition clip.

For what, Peter Dinklage’s Glock?

(And if that’s now a politically incorrect joke, all I can say is it isn’t the first time and definitely won’t be the last, so relax or it’s gonna be a very bumpy ride.)

The Busted Airplane

After changing my departure time and connecting city, I rescheduled to a more convenient flight and then the airline changed that departure time and connecting city and this time I left at 12:30 PM and connected through Denver which was way more convenient and took a couple hours off my trip, so they could have done that the first time, but I’m guessing somebody somewhere was trying to fill up an empty airplane headed for El Paso, Texas at the Buttcrack of Dawn.

So I make it onto the plane in Denver and thank God and the Baby Jesus I find an aisle seat with nobody in the middle seat and the guy by the window is already asleep and snoring like a McCulloch chain saw.

Perfect.

I don’t know about you, but when I get on a plane I cringe if the person sitting next to me doesn’t have a book because that means they’ll want to talk and when people try to start conversations by saying things like: “What brings you to El Paso, Texas?”

My standard answer is some version of: “To check in with my parole officer. Man, you kill one random stranger and they just won’t let that shit go.”  

Which usually puts an end to the conversation and my co-traveler develops a sudden and deep interest in reading the instructions on how a seat belt works, because apparently the airlines think we’re such imbeciles we’ll accept Dawn Patrol flights to El Paso and still haven’t figured out how to put on a seat belt.  

They also instructed us on the correct procedure in the event of a water landing, which kinda makes you wonder what body of water they expected to land in between Denver and Sacramento. I’m under the impression that’s why the settlers kept going until they hit the Pacific Ocean; no water in Utah or Nevada.

So everything seemed to be going great until the pilot gets on the intercom and says before we leave Denver they have to fix something on the airplane and it will take about 10 minutes and the passengers let out a collective groan, but I’m thinking, “Take all the time you want” because if there’s anything I don’t want done in a hurry, it’s a repair to the airplane I’m about to fly in.

In fact, I think they should make people who repair airplanes be the first ones to fly in them immediately after the repair because I’m guessing you’d get a few mechanics who’d say maybe they’d check those bolts one more time.

Anyway…

An hour later the pilot announces the repair is done and now they’re just waiting on the paperwork which will take (you guessed it) about 10 minutes.

The rental car

So finally I arrive in Sacramento, but when I left Kansas City it was in the 30s and I was freezing my ass all the way to the airport, but in Sacramento it’s 91 degrees and because I dressed to stay warm on the way to the airport I look like Admiral Peary making an unscheduled stop in Miami Beach.

When I travel I try to let go and not stress out because you’re not in control and getting irritated doesn’t change anything, but I spent all day waiting on other people to get their shit together and when I get to the car rental counter there’s a big line and it’s filled with people who seem to have absolutely no experience renting cars or with cars in general and ask questions like what’s the extra insurance get me and do you need to know I’m going to San Francisco and will cross the Bay Bridge and how much will the gas cost if I don’t bring the vehicle back with the tank full and by the way, what’s an SUV?

Finally it’s my turn and the car rental guy asks me if I want extra insurance and how many passengers I’m going to have in the car which you’d think would be none of his damn business because after I rent a car I feel like I have the right to fill it full of circus clowns and enter it into the Indianapolis 500 as long as I bring it back on time and the gas tank is full.

He also wants to know if I’d like to upgrade from the Kia Soul I’ve reserved (which I’m pretty sure is a skateboard with a motor) to a Toyota 4Runner SUV for the incredibly reasonable sum of an extra $5 a day. After I say I’ll stick with the Kia, he hems and haws and then haws and hems and finally gets around to admitting he doesn’t have a Kia Soul available.

In fact, all he has is the Toyota 4Runner which he now has to give me without charging an extra $5 a day and he tries to make it sound like he’s being incredibly generous, like maybe I’ve developed a sudden case of amnesia and have totally forgotten that he tried to fuck me out of $5 a day about 30 seconds ago.

So it sounds like I got a good deal until you realize the 4Runner gets 19 miles per gallon on the highway and has a 23-gallon tank and gas in California is $5.77 a gallon so a 4Runner fill up is going to cost me $132.71.

I’m currently looking into getting a short-term bank loan or robbing a convenience store.  

On the other hand…

Turns out the rental car people were right to be worried about their vehicle because after an entire day of sitting around and waiting for other people to get their shit together, once I got the 4Runner started, I was immediately on my way and thought I could figure out where everything was as I drove.

But…

That night I had to park it on a hill which made the parking brake seem like a good idea, but when I got back to the car it was dark, so I fumbled around under the dash to find the parking brake release lever, pulled it and put the car in drive, but in reality I had pulled the wrong lever and popped the hood release and the car had a warning light that told me I still had the brake on, but then I finally figured out how to release the brake and decided maybe it was not a good idea to drive down the freeway with the hood partially open considering how many pre-drive Manhattans I consumed, so I got out to close the hood, but had left the car in drive so while I was pushing the hood down, my 4Runner tried to run over me.

I got out of the way of my homicidal Toyota, but then had to chase it down the street and thank God or whatever religious figure is the Patron Saint of Morons because I also left the driver’s door open which made jumping in easier, because after trying to murder me, my 4Runner was leaving the scene of the crime at a pretty good clip — and I wasn’t in it.   

And all that happened on the first day.

I’m going to be here a couple more weeks so if I keep up this kind of behavior my 96-year-old mother’s odds of outliving me look better and better. Assuming my Toyota 4Runner doesn’t kill me (and paying for a fill-up just might finish me off) I’ll talk to you soon.

Maybe.