Aside: I should get some kind of award for the longest delay in continuing a post. Kind of like a season cliffhanger...
After twice counting the 643 ceiling tiles, with a grand sigh, the disheveled Mrs. Checkin motions me to her. I smile and say, "You know, I have enough for an extra ticket if you'd like to come with me..." She looks up from her computer screen and, ever so slowly, returns my grin. By the time it's over, I'm booked first class to EWR in two hours. Not bad for a $180 e-ticket. A quick call to Catman and everythings fine. "No worries," he says. "That's better than JFK anyway. They won't let non-flyers past them so I'll be just outside the metal detectors in my old Hawaiian Shirt." I knew I'd soon be fixing that!
The new future Mrs. Wanderlust had given me an open tab at the coffee bar so I help myself to a tub of mocha breve and plug my glossy new G3 laptop into a nearby socket. Within an hour, I've mastered the DVD player so I approach Mr. Gatekeeper and ask him if I might possibly get onto the ealier flight to Denver. "No promises," he says, "but I'll see what I can do." Apparently, every waiting passenger had made the same request before me. But after the plane had loaded, only one standby passenger was called. I'm beginning to see the benefits of having premier status
.
As usual, the ride over the rockies is bumpy in the 19-passenger flying ceiling fan 1900, but I know I have another two hours to heal from the bruises before the flight to EWR. And as we descend out of the lowering holiday clouds, it occurs to me just how similar the runway layout at Denver International Airport is to a giant schwaztica.
Quickly shaking that realization off, I find the Red Carpet Club West. Over a relaxed drink with QuantumLeap a month earlier I had decided that once a Premier, I'd take advantage of the modest discount and enjoy the welcome escape. I feel a slight tinge of awkwardness pulling from my taxi wallet my Delta Skymiles card. Like a timid child I hesitate; glancing about I see groups of PremEx's and 1kers staring up from their laptops, showing their disapproval, furrowing their brows and slowly shaking their collective heads. But before I can slip it home, Mrs. Deskagent, in one efficient desk-agent type motion, grabs the card from my clammy hand and swipes it through her beeping machine. And all at once, it is done. I feel I have somehow graduated. I remember as a youngster passing those secret doors and mysterious elevators, wondering what "club members only" was all about. Tuxedo-clad James Bond-type businessmen holding martinis, oggling beautiful women around spinning roulette wheels? Hmmm. Well, it's not all that. But the martini's can be had for a price.
I move into the first class cabin and sip at a cold soda, glancing discretely at the faces around me. Mostly men, business attire, bent over their Forbes magazines. A voided motley crew concerned only with their favorite stock. Not much in the way of conversation, I decide, so I dig out my Forbes magazine, bend over it and look up DIS. The flights I take are usually aimed at the west cost, so a movie on a domestic flight is a nice diversion. The Barbeque dinner is above average, the service quite reasonable as is the bottle of 1996 Carmen Cabernet Sauvignon one stewardess carefully wraps and hands to me as we arrive in Newark. The only thing keeping the flight from getting an "A" was that despite sitting in my assigned seat, the crew, even after referring to the seat manifest, kept calling me Mr. Yonardo.
I gather my only bag from the over-head bin and march through the jetway before the herd has time to stampede. Waiting for me, just as he said he would be, wearing a coy grin and a very well-worn and faded Aloha Shirt, is Catman. And I knew that the fun was just about to begin...
...to be continued...
(Sorry, but I have a life outside FT too!!)
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Mahalo mini-me!
http://www.hotshirts.com