Day 1: Delta Sucks

The day started off inauspiciously enough.  We were packed ahead of time.  I did some last minute vacuuming to get rid of the gigantic piles of dog hair that perpetually live at our house.  I even got a nice drive to the airport from my friend Eunice, of the Village Chauffeur.  Then it went wrong.

We got to the airport around 10:45 am.  There was no line for Delta, so we went right up and got our boarding passes and made it through security relatively quickly.  I was reading the current book for my book club, when the guy behind me got a text and said "The flight's delayed."

A few minutes later the gate person announced that because of the storm we had just had (which was bad but brief, maybe 15 minutes) the pilot had gotten low on fuel and had to divert to Memphis.  Say what?  It was an hour away.  She said he should be back in about an hour.

Well, one hour turned into 2 hours.  Which was our exact layover time in Atlanta.  I talked to the gate agent and she said if we missed the connection, the next flight we could get on was at 5:45 pm, the next day.  Joy.

We waited.  The damn plane finally made it back and everyone got off.  Including the 1 flight attendant who had to use the bathroom.  So we spent several minutes waiting for her to finish and get back so we could board.

We finally take off.  The flight was uneventful.  The flight attendant was nice.  We told her the situation, and several other people were in the same boat, so when we landed at 5:30, she asked people to remain seated so we could get off the plane first.

Thus commenced almost 10 minutes of waiting for the gate agent to get in the fucking jetway and attach it to the plane.  The flight attendant said the plane-checked bags were already out, so we should be okay.  But we weren't.  It took another 5 minutes for someone to open the pulldown door where the checked bags were supposed to be, and then actually unload the checked bags.

While Frank waited on his bag, I ran to the desk by the gate and asked about our next flight.  The woman looked it up on her computer and said it was at gate F1 and it was running late and wouldn't depart until 6:10.  Huzzah!

We grab our stuff and hustle down the concourse - of course we were at the very end.  We catch the train to F, go up 2 escalators, and then have to hustle down to the end of that concourse.  Which is when we see our plane about 50 feet away from the jetway, leaving.  And it was at gate F3.  I asked some airport guys there if that was our plane, could we get it back, and they were like "Duh?  We're not Delta people."  At this point, it was 5:50 pm.

I go down to F1 which now shows an Air France flight, and ask there.  That flight was a different flight, and we were told to go to the red help desk.  We went there, and after a long, long, long time, the guy helping us finally got our tickets changed from Air France, to a Delta flight leaving later this evening.  So we'll get to Paris in the afternoon, then spend the night, because there's only 1 flight a day to Slovenia, and it's in the morning.

Fuck!  If Delta wasn't incompetent, we would have made our flight, even being 2 hours late!

By this point, we were both red and completely drenched in sweat from our run.  We walked back to the terminal to find some food, but it was either pricey, packed, or just looked icky.  I checked a directory and we ended up going back to C to eat at the Atlanta Bread Company.  I was getting a caffeine headache by then, and starving, since I hadn't really eaten since breakfast and it was now after 6pm.

After that, we headed back to F concourse.  Only to discover that since we were flying an actual Delta jet, it was at E concourse.  So we head there.  I eventually got hooked up to Wifi and tweeted angrily @Delta for a while.  Then I started looking for hotels near Charles De Gaulle airport.

About 8pm Frank needed some caffeine.  There's a big food court and coffee shop at the front end of this concourse, so he went there.  It was closed.  There was a woman at the coffee shop and he said "Is there anywhere in this pesthole of an airport where I can get coffee?"  She said "F concourse."  Of course.

So he's on a quest for coffee while I blog and watch our bags.  At least we'll be overnighting in Paris.  Le sigh.