I fly a lot. Navigating airports has become second nature to me however we all have our moments, or in this case a whole series of moments…

My coworkers are amazing. The company is distributed so we do not see each other in person often. Lastnight a few of us gathered together for merrimaking. I forced myself to leave a 1am.

1:20am- arrive back at the hotel and begin to pack.

2:30am- finally fall asleep.

4:30am- 2 hours later my alarm goes off… Ugh

5:10am- Griggily get out of bed and proceed to the airport.

So lets recap: cool people, staying out, 2 hours of sleep, now I have to hit the airport.

The fantastic Uber private car service dropped me right in front of the Alaska terminal door with 2 hours till my 8am flight.

At the automated flight checkin there are 2 machines. One has a JavaScript error showing and I had to pull myself away from attempting to debug it (wow, nerdy much?). The other machine spins its wheels in an excruciating effort to locate my flight details before giving up and pointing me to a human.

There are no humans.

No airport phone to call for help.

United has humans, and a long line of other humans checking in. I made my way over and was redirected to the American terminal.

Bummer, two buildings away and pouring rain.

American has one human working and checkin is deserted of passenger humans. Hmm…not looking good. The lady is helpful but says my flight is not listed. The only flight at that time is by United.

I check my email again…United.

D’oh! Back into the rain I go.

The United checkin machine does not like me either. While waiting for a human to help I start trying different combinations. Viola! One works and I happily happy snatch up the boarding pass.

It is now 6:50am but I am feeling confident. I have TSA pre-check! I am going to sail through security and have plenty of time to get breakfast.

As I approach the security line I am chuckling internally at the chumps going through normal security. There are 100+ highschool girls in line. My joy is short lived however as as soon as I turn down the pre-check lane I realize they are *all* in the pre-check lane! Zoinks!

Longest and slowest wait I have ever had in pre-check. Even so I sailed through security in in 5 minutes. Even got to keep my pants and all other articles of clothing firmly attached to my person.

Now I sit here firmly planted at my gate awaiting the flight. No sense risking additional chaos by moving around till this coffee kicks in and I wake up.

Oh wait, the coffee is scalding hot. Too hot to even hold the cup…

Addendum: boarding has been hampered by incompetence. Staff are calling out names from the counter instead of the intercom. This is causing massive waits as many are not hearing them. The intercom is only used to call out which zone on the plane is boarding. So far 20 minutes after the boarding process started only half of one group has boarded.

Second addendum: Right after I sat down on the plane I pulled out my headphones and the left earphone fell off :(. The company’s support was great though! I highly recommend Griffin Wood Tones just for that. A new pair is in the mail already.