COLUMN: Time Takes a Holiday

By Tobin Barnes
Let me tell you a tale of woe. We were taking a trip to South Carolina a couple weeks ago when time became mushy. And let me tell you, you don’t want your time to get mushy like ours did.

It all started at the Rapid City Airport. Our last travel adventure, The Trip to Nowhere, had started at that airport, too. That one had also ended there. Matter of fact, this current South Carolina trip I’m talking about was actually the fulfillment of a South Carolina trip that had abruptly ended in the blizzards of April. Then the Rapid City Airport closed due to bad weather, despite the fact that we had snow-shoed--among other things--to get to that airport on time for our flight.

If you note a certain bitterness so far, good--that tone will continue in spades.

Anyway, it’s while we’re waiting for our second attempt to fly to South Carolina that time got mushy. We and our fellow travelers had boarded the plane in good order, stowed our baggage, and gotten settled when the captain told us to get back off the plane. Apparently, a runway construction delay in Denver made them unable to receive our flight from Rapid City. Rather than sit and wait on the plane, we would get off to sit and wait in the terminal. This would be more comfortable, and “it shouldn’t take long.”

It shouldn’t, but it did. In the mean time, a guy sitting behind us in the waiting area decided to make a totally meaningless cell phone call. Why do I call it meaningless? Because I was subjected to hearing every word of it, as was everyone else in the surrounding area, given the human propensity to talk louder into a cell phone than is necessary, particularly in public. And let me assure you--that conversation was totally meaningless. But that’s a topic for another day.

Eventually, we were told to board the plane again. And we were doing just that when we were told to stop boarding the plane. The problem in Denver evidently still hadn’t been resolved.

Well, we’re back in the terminal yet again, but “it shouldn’t take long,” and the ticket agents would reassign us new connecting flights for the connections we were going to miss in Denver.

Now “long” is a relative term. When a criminal is sentenced to life imprisonment, that’s long. But when a “not long” airport delay causes a missed connection, that can also be long, as you will soon see. Yes, time had begun to get mushy.

Once in Denver, we found our new, later connection to Dallas, the second leg of three on our trip to South Carolina, and boarded without any reboarding rigamarole. But be assured, this was not the beginning of a happier time. We were now trapped in a vortex of mushiness that would last at least six hours. I eventually became so slap-happy I’m not sure of even that figure, what with the time change and all.

Ever spent six hours sitting in a little uncomfortable airplane seat when you thought you were going to spend less than two hours in it? Don’t. It will fathom the depths of your psychological inadequacies.

Because of the reassigned connection, we weren’t even sitting next to each other, and therefore unable to carp upon our misery to a familiar ear. What’s worse, I was stuck between two burly guys named Bubba.

Things really started going to heck when the pilot told us there was a thunderstorm over Dallas so our takeoff would be delayed a few minutes. I’ve always thought of “few” meaning three or four...at the outside maybe five. His few minutes was more like a half hour. The mushiness was continuing.

After we finally took off and were flying for a while, the pilot gets on and says the storm didn’t move on as fast as expected, so we were going into a holding pattern over Wichita Falls to wait it out. But it shouldn’t take “long,” maybe 15 minutes.
Yeah, there’s that word again. We ended up holding for more than a half hour when he gets back on and says the unplanned delay was using up our fuel, so we’d have to land in Oklahoma City to refuel, but it shouldn’t take “long.” We’d be first in line.

As you have probably guessed, not only did it take long--we were evidently last in the refueling line--but after gassing up and taxiing out for take off, the pilot gets on and tells us things were still fouled up in Dallas because a big backlog of planes still had to land after the storm delay. So we’d have to sit on the tarmac there in Oklahoma City until things cleared out. “Shouldn’t be more than a half hour.” Turned into more like an hour.

He also said not to worry since all the planes coming into Dallas had been delayed, so our connecting flights would probably still be there for us once we got in. Uh huh.
Of course, as you have probably also guessed, ours wasn’t. It had been “long” gone in the mushiness of time. I hope that’s the last night I spend in Dallas.