Even when you are jumping two time zones ahead, leaving at 8:30 in the morning and not arriving at your destination until after 1:30 the next morning is a long travel day. Northwest lost my luggage, and compounded this with a series of organizational problems that made the process of filling out my claim ridiculously protracted and miserable. Whatever else might be said about my impending change of affiliation from Madison to Northwestern, I'm feeling right now rueful enthusiasm about the prospect of switching airline allegiances from Northwest to United.
To get to the airport earlier today, we took the especially scenic route from Aspen to Denver, going over Independence Pass (12K feet) and driving along all kinds of twisty mountain roads. Just like when I made the same trip last year, I spent much of the trip feeling car sick. Remember how in "The Clockwork Orange" they condition the protagonist by drugging him to feel nauseous while overloading him with visual stimuli of violence? I feel like mountain roads do the same thing to me, but instead of creating an aversion to violence creating an aversion to nature. No wonder I'm such a passionate fan of The Great Indoors.
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4 comments:
This sounds really annoying, sorry to hear it.
The nice thing about having ORD as your home base is that while others are stuck at the airport waiting for their connections, you're in a cab on your way home. And because there are several flights to the most likely destinations (like NYC), even a delay or cancellation doesn't upset one's schedule that much.
Or I just seem to have relatively good air travel karma (while we know that you don't, it'll be interesting to see if that changes).
I'm sorry you had such a rough trip. Being car sick really, really sucks. In defense of the Great Outdoors, though, I must say that I've never gotten car sick from hiking (or backpacking or sea kayaking...).
I am looking forward to you being close to ORD, so that when I get stuck there, requesting that you come rescue me will be more reasonable than, say, when you were in Madison.
United bumps you off flights. Just ask your new colleagues. And you cannot say anything nice about flying in and out of ORD, except that when one flight fails you, there is always another.
United is very unlikely to bump you off flights when you're a Premier member (or higher) and with all the miles you'll have flying on United (since it's the cheapest airline to most destinations out of Chicago) you'll get that status quickly. In fact, I think NU has a deal with United so that any faculty member can get that right away, you might want to check into that.
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