Brother’s Graduation / Unreal Travel Variance Part 1

My brother graduated from Vanderbilt on Friday, so I went down Thursday for the dinner and so he, our sister and I could do a little celebrating that night. I decided to just fly instead of making the 450 mile drive partly because part of that drive is pretty mountainous and dangerous, I had those fainting spells last fall, and didn't really want to do it by myself. Its also a pain, 6 hours in the car is a long time. Anyway, so I decided to fly, but the direct flight was going to cost $900 for some absurd reason, so I settled with the connecting flight for $450.

Alright so I get to the airport, get on the plane for the 11 o'clock takeoff, and then there's a problem with the ice sensor on one of the wings. I'm all for safety, so I have no problem with them spending 90 minutes getting the part, replacing it, and testing it. Except for the fact that it will be very close with my connecting flight in Cincinnati. At least I'm sitting next to a very smart guy who's got his own sports marketing research firm in Charlotte, and we had a good time talking about each others' business and laughing about various athletes' extravagance, so the delay wasn't a big deal except for the whole connecting thing.

We land in Cincinnati 5 minutes after my connecting flight was supposed to have taken off, its one of those little planes so I have to wait for my carry on to be brought up, then I check the gate, and its at the other end of the terminal. For those that haven't been to this airport, its one huge long terminal, with a concave roof like a football stadium, and you can see from one end to the other. So I sprint like 400 yards with my bag, and I get to the gate and fist pump because the plane is still there, and its door is open.

Then I notice the door leading to the plane is closed, which apparently is a big ****ing deal, I ask a guy at another counter and he just says "yeah sorry, once we close that door, that's it." Well considering the plane is still at the gate with its door open, I'm not buying that nothing can be done, so I find someone else and explain the situation. Besides, there are 2 other people trying to get on this plane, and its another small one that only holds about 50 people. So this guy is much cooler, and volunteers to go explain things to the pilot and see what he can do. He comes back up and says "Yeah sorry, the pilot's not letting anyone else on, he's already started the paperwork."

You have got to be kidding me. I understand that they have to calculate the plane's weight, and do some pre-flight stuff, and they'd have to redo that when more people and bags get on board. However, there were 3 of us, and this is a freaking SERVICE company, how can you just totally screw 3 people who are trying to get where they need to be, because you don't want to spend 10 extra minutes redoing some paper work. Its not like the plane is waiting in line to take off, its door is still open. So we all miss the flight because this asshole won't budge and prevent our travels from being ruined. Naturally, the next Delta flight to Nashville is 9am the next morning, when Vandy's graduation starts, not exactly an option.

This is a good time to point out my ridiculous cell-phone situation which plagued me throughout the trip. I've got an iphone like everyone else and I've basically used it like crazy, so the battery only holds a charge for about 20 minutes on standby, or for about 7 minutes of talk time or internet time. In other words, I have to have it plugged in to even make a call. So I get out the charging cable and find an outlet at ear-height next to a bank of payphones (the irony of that scene did not go unnoticed) and start calling my wife and my family to update them. My wife checked out the other airlines for flights to Nashville, and there was nothing that could get me there faster than if I just drove the 280 miles.

With that, I have to find a rental car, but first I have to buy an iphone car charger at an airport store and I scored one at one of those dvd places, then I hit up Sbarro, then Starbucks, and then went down to the rental car offices. It turns out all these offices were not connected to the baggage claim like most airports, you have to get on a shuttle for each one. There's an Enterprise shuttle waiting outside, so I get on that because its the first one there and I need to get on the road so I can still make the graduation dinner.

As it turns out, Enterprise wouldn't rent me a car to drive to Nashville. "We're not really set up for that," I was told. Whatever that means, haha, its not like they are in the business of renting cars for transportation purposes or anything. So I have to get a ride back to the terminal, and this time I use the courtesy phones and a couple places will rent me one, but "compact cars only" for Nashville. So while I'm on the shuttle dreading to see what Hertz considers to be a compact car, we pull up and there's a new Camaro parked in front of the office. I head in there, praying they will rent me something that can behave itself at 90 MPH for 3 hours and not be all over the road. I fill out the info and then we get to the car options: A Chevy Cobalt or a Toyota Yaris. Now I had no idea wtf a Yaris is, but I have rented a Cobalt before, and let's just say I was underwhelmed at its highway abilities. So after desperately trying and failing to convince this woman to rent me the Camaro or at least something bigger than a cobalt, I rolled the dice on the Yaris.

I get into the Yaris and take off. Ironically, the Yaris had an Aux input for my iphone or ipad, and the dvd store back at the airport probably sold the cord I needed, but sadly the thought of the rental car having an ipod hookup did not even cross my mind. So at first I just cranked up the ipad's speaker, which is surprisingly loud btw, but then just said screw it and put the white apple headphones instead, I was on the phone half the time anyway. All in all the drive went by pretty smoothly. Oh, and while the Yaris isn't exactly a BMW at 90 MPH, it's got the edge over the Cobalt for sure, so I made the right choice there.

Pulling into the restaurant's parking lot just in time for dinner, I threw on a fresh shirt and went in, it was a banquet style dinner for my brother's entire fraternity class where each family had a table. It was a good time, I got to meet a bunch of my brother's friends I've heard about, and after a drink and some water the stress of the day of travel started to fade. Although I was still irritated at myself for not just driving myself directly from Charlotte, that would have cut have cut the travel time in half, ironically.

After dinner I went back to my brother's place, and it was about what you'd expect from 4 22-year old dudes about to graduate college. We chilled for a while and had a couple drinks before calling a cab to pick up my sister from her hotel and the three of us and my brother's friends went to downtown Nashville to hit a few bars. Its a nice scene, even though I can't stand country music, we weren't actually inundated with it since there was a lot of indie rock to go around. The one band that was just too country for me kept playing songs where I was literally the only person there who had not only hadn't heard the song before, but was the only one without my hand in the air singing along.

My brother told me to join in, and I said that would happen when they played some Guns N' Roses, which he laughed at and said don't get your hopes up. However, just 2 songs later, they closed out their set with a really good cover of "Sweet Child," and that was adequate redemption as far as I was concerned. The timing of it was hysterical though, given the chat we'd just had. After the bars closed we went back to his fraternity house and hung out for a little while with some more of his friends, all in all, he was a good host and showed us an awesome time, and it was cool to get a glimpse of his college experience.

Part 2 coming in a couple days.