Winging It

There's an aura of calm before the storm at 5:15 a.m. at gate B11 at Philly International. It started building slowly, and by the time I got to check-in, there were small lines of people and situations where little delays would make all the difference. You could see that once the crowd filled the terminal buiding, those small delays would multiply exponentially,

I went to the auto-check-in kiosk but the screen didn't work. The woman next to me couldn't get hers to work either. But she banged on its and it finally worked. She had an overweght bag and had to check it in, but the person at the counter pushed a wrong button and it led to 15-minute wait. It was a small snag with big implications. Most of the people working for US Airways were nice, and they were trying. One traveler was impatient. She thought she was being charged an extra $100 for something that was optional, and she went to the woman managing the line, who kind of snapped, "Just say you don’t want to pay!" The traveler laughed.

It liks a petri dish here, waiting for some primordial thing to grow. I asked a woman at the counter if my bags would arrive in Phoenix, and she said, 'Oh yes, I’m very confident they will." I laughed. 'That's nice, but what are you going to do, run down to baggage chute to make sure!'

I suppose here is where I should explain a little more. I'm taking this trip from Philadelphia to Phoenix to Seattle on the day before Thanksgiving on US Airways, to test anything and everything with the airline and the travel system. I've packed some nicely wrapped decoy gifts in my checked baggage to see if they survive the trip without being stolen, as some have on this airline. I'm returning on the red-eye tonight from Seattle to Charlotte and back to Philadelphia, blogging all the way and hopefully arriving tomorrow with time to file a story for the paper and get home to cook a holiday meal -- okay, finish cooking the meal my daughters have already started -- for 20 people at my house.

Even as I came to the airport this morning, this experiment was put in perspective. I arrived by cab, my driver was Nigerian. That gives you some perspective. He said his country was a mess and he would never go back to Lagos. I’m sure whatever we may go through here is nothing compared to Lagos.

On the plane now, I see a guy and his son sitting ahead of me. The kid is wearing a Santa Claus hat. I ask him if he's nervous for the plane trip, and the kid says: "No ma'am, I’m just excited." There's a family behind me, and I ask them if they're headed somewhere for the holiday. The woman smiled broadly. "No, we’re going to Maui on vacation." Wish I was.

- M.D.