After spending a really fast night at the Holiday Inn North, Andy and I hustled back to the airport by 7:30.  We have failed to get seats on four flights so far and spent two nights in hotels.  Andy is really discouraged.  “I hate flying,” he says now.  A bad second experience will do that for you.  We are both pretty tired.

There are lots of business travelers in suits.  But it’s spring break so we still have lots of kids and adults in Bermuda shorts.  What a mixture!

I find myself thinking about work for the first time in ten days.

Things didn’t look good for the 9:00 a.m. flight to Dallas, but at the last possible minute they called for “Anders, party of two” and we were off.

Airport Entertainment Guide
1) Listen to the Intercom
Airports are places where automated voices boom out of nowhere giving you all kinds of meritorious advice:
“Caution  This train is departing.  Please hold on.”
“Attention.  Do not accept any carry-on items form people unknown to you.”
And then real agents come over the loudspeakers with their special requests:
“Passenger Smith.  Please meet your party at the Delta ticket office”
“Any Delta agent who speaks Russian, please call 22.”

2) Watch irate customers
Almost every flight has it’s irate customers.  “What!” screamed a black lady.  “You gave my seat away?  I just went for a drink and you sold my seat to somebody else?  I demand that you get me an airplane RIGHT NOW!” Poor ticket agents.  They have a hard job.  Every flight has somebody like that.  People who think a 7:15 flight means they don’t have to arrive until 7:15.  But the agents are juggling passengers and seats and stand-by people. It’s quite a balancing act.

3) Decipher airport terminology
Why do airports have a language all their own?  Why does the airport have to be called a terminal?  Does this have anything to do with what happens to you if you have a crash?  Why are the hallways called “concourses?”  Why are the lobbies called “gatehouses?”  Why are the little expandable hallways that lead right out to the airplanes called “jetways?”  (Well, I guess jet way is better than “little expandable hallways that lead right out to the airplanes.”

4) Eat - A Connoisseur’s Guide to Gourmet Airport Food
When you are spending a week or so it seems in airports, you will need this bit of kindly advice concerning gourmet airport food.  There are a surprising number of options in the varying shops and fast-food counters.  There are many ways to make mistakes, but after much trial and error, here is the connoisseur’s guide to the best:

ST THOMAS
Chances are pretty good that you won’t be a-staying in the St. Thomas airport at meal-time.  What with flights leaving at 9:15 and 4:00, if you miss one you are likely to leave and return for the next try.  However, they do serve an excellent breakfast of which you might partake in the early morning before your 9:15 flight.  Bagels and coffee are recommended pre-flight nourishment.

ATLANTA
The Coffee Haus has good coffee and blueberry muffins.  Stroll down the B concourse to the Coffee Haus conveniently located in the middle of the food court.  They offer café latte, cappuccino, and, more importantly, the flavor of the day at very reasonable prices.  Add a large blueberry muffin and you have a keeper.
Feed your kids pizza; that’s all they like.  Sabarro’s serves really big slices, rated four stars by teens.  Dominos is Okay, but the slices are too small.
Adults should frequent the Wall Street Deli.  Now this is a mature fastfood place.  Sandwiches have fancy-pants names like the “Manhattan” or the “Denver.”  The “Manhattan” came highly recommended by the medical student from Chicago standing in line behind Sarah and me.  It contained a variety of meats with Thousand Island Salad Dressing.  Thick sandwich for adults.  But we warned: the lady behind the counter is kin to the man who runs the soup kitchen on Seinfield.  “Sandwich? No sandwich for you! Next!  Sandwich?  Pay over there!  Next!”

DALLAS
The Coffee Haus here just doesn’t compare to the one in Atlanta.  The girl behind the counter just didn’t know how to make her cappuccino (too much milk), but the raisin bagel was fine.
After the fancy-pants meals you have had at the other kiosks, you are ready for a down home, All-American hamburger at Burger King.  Generous portions with your choice of condiments topped with a big, old Dr. Pepper and you have a meal fit for a teenager.

FIRST CLASS
But I must admit that the best airport food is in the air.  Yup, in-flight food in first class from St. Thomas to Atlanta at 37,000 is hard to beat.  Service!  Lots of fruit (pineapple, orange, kiwi), bagels and all the coffee, juice, cokes you want to drink.  Now that’s airport food at it’s best.
 And better yet are the little ginger crackers they serve you in coach, but only if and when you are on the last flight - the one that finally, at long last, puts you in Little Rock.  Food on the way home is best.

While waiting (WAITING!  That's all we've done for a while now!) in the Dallas airport, we got word that we would most likely get on the 1:10 p.m. flight to Little Rock because there were 17 empty seats at that time.
"Good!" Andy said, putting his head over on my shoulder. "I want to go home, Dad.  I want to go home."  Then clicking his heels twice he said, "There's no place like home!  There's no place like home!"
 
 

“We all have our dreams.  Without them we should be clods.  It is in our dreams that we accomplish the impossible, the rich man dumps his load of responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountaintop, the poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding-place.”
(Ralph Stock, quoted in _Tales of the Caribbean_ by Fritz Seyforth, page 40.)

End -  Motherofallvacations Vacation