I arrived at the Portland Airport at 4:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, just as the Alamo rental car building opened up. It was drizzling as it tends to do a lot in Portland, and the ground was wet, as well as the air, which was damp and cool. I dropped the mini van off and grabbed the behemoth of a bycicle box from the back while the Alamo employee scanned the bar code on my rental and generated a reciept with her pocket printer.
I lugged the box out and carried it 30 yards to the shuttle van, and heaved it up the steps. It was heavy at 63 pounds and I couldn’t wait for it to be in the hands of AirCanada after I checked it in. Bicycles are difficult and expensive to fly with and there is just no way around it. If you want to fly with your bike you have to just deal with the reality that it’s a massive pain in the ass.
The shuttle dropped me off curbside and I lugged the box into the airport. I was early and the counter wasn’t open yet. I waited and watched the line build behind me, and eventually the staff started trickling into work one by one, powering on the computers and logging themselves into the AirCanada network.
There were four women behind the counter to check in passengers for this one flight, and they were talking briskly about something in hushed whispers. It’s the kind of conversation that is tense even though you can’t really hear what’s going on.
“Well, I don’t know what we are going to do,” one of them snapped.
“What gets me is they knew about this last night,” said a different woman.
“The plane that flew in last night was a small 50 passenger plane. It was the wrong one. We have over 70 people booked for the flight this morning,” said a third.
This last bit made my ears perk up. That was a lot of people to be overbooked. The women chatted for another ten minutes, trying to hide their conversation from everyone in line, unsure of what to really do. Out of the four people working nobody seemed to be taking charge of the situation or really know what to do, so they of course started to check people and their bags in without any strategy.
I was second in line and dragged myself and my bike up to the counter. The woman explained the situation to me, the one I overheard already, and told me that I would be issued a ticket and that I would be given a seat assignment at the counter at the gate. She seemed unsure of herself through the whole process. I paid my bike fee, which was a pretty reasonable 50 dollars, and then had to lug it to the oversize bag area before going through security.
I arrived at the gate to nobody working at the counter there, and a bad and anxious feeling formed in my gut about the whole situation.
Eventually after waiting an hour the same clueless staff from the check in area started trickling into the gate area. I went up to the counter and handed my ticket over and asked for my seat assignment.
Clueless brown eyes looked back at me and said, “We have an overbooked flight today so we need to board everyone who has a seat assignment first before addressing the standbys.”
My heart beat fast in my chest and I tried to calm myself down before saying something.
“Why wasn’t I given a seat assignment when I checked in? I was literally the second person to check into the flight.”
“I don’t know sir, we are trying to handle the situation. As you know, we have a smaller plan this morning and will not be able to accommodate everyone on this flight.”
I rolled my eyes. What a stupid idiot.
“So what is going to happen?” I asked. “If I don’t get on this flight I’m going to miss my connection to Korea.”
“We need to board the plane first and then address standbys after,” she said shortly, brushing me off and taking a question from another passenger, who was flying with his family of four and had been issued 3 standby tickets and one seated ticket.
Nothing made sense.
A few more people with standby tickets came to the counter to try and get answers and were met with the same lame response. Without any more communication, they began boarding the flight.
I was beyond pissed. Carolyn was flying out of Detroit and we were to meet at the airport in Korea. She got off her first leg of the trip fine and was at a lay-over in Toronto and I notified her of the situation.
I imagined her being in Korea by herself with this big obnoxious bicycle box and it made me sick and upset. I needed to get there.
I watched nervously as the last seated people got on the plane and the incompetent staff tried to figure out how many seats were still available for standby passengers (aka: me and about 18 other people).
“We have 4 seats left,” brown eyes said to some big guy with a beard who seemed to be taking charge.
“Okay, ticket the crew,” he said as he looked over at to two AirCanada employees who were waiting. They had no involvement with the actual flight and were being flown somewhere else to service a flight out of Vancouver.
“That leaves two seats, then,” said brown eyes, looking at the computer monitor.
“Ah, here.” The beard point at the screen. “There is a couple, give them the tickets.”
My heart sank.
“We can’t do that,” brown eyes said. “This person here actually has priority.”
The beard seemed satisfied.
Brown eyes raised the intercom to her lips and said, “Mr. Zanarini to the podium please.”
I breathed a big sigh of relief and approached the counter. I was going to get on this flight after all.
I texted Carolyn and told her everything was fine and I got on the plane.
I entered the boarding hallway and looked back at all the other people waiting that didn’t get on the flight. A lot of families and couples stood around upset, talking to brown eyes at the counter, getting the same lame response over and over.
I had gotten lucky and made my way to my seat at the front of the plane. I was the last person on the flight, so I defaulted to THAT guy who has to scour the aisle for any remaining overhead bin space. Which, of course, there was none. Completely over it, I sat down in my chair and just shoved my backpack under the seat in front of me with a enough force to make it fit.
The rain started coming down again as I looked out the window of the airplane. I took a breath and closed my eyes and was thankful that a bit of luck and good fortune came my way, even though AirCanada really dropped the ball on this.
An adventure isn’t an adventure without some adversary at the very beginning, I guess.
The flight went smoothly and I made my connection without incident. The flight to Seoul Incheon Airport was long at 10 and a half hours but it went by quickly. This was the first time I flew on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner and it was pretty cool. They fed me 3 times and had a great selection of movies to watch.
I then found myself in South Korea and I couldn’t read most of the signs and understand what people were saying. Luckily the important signs were in English and I found my way to baggage claim and retrieved my bicycle, which I was relieved made it to Incheon and was in one piece.
I waited for Carolyn and she arrived an hour later and it was so good to see her. We both had been up for well over 30 hours minus some napping on the plane, so we were pretty out of it. We grabbed her bike which also thankfully made it and then headed to the Taxi stand. We got into a jumbo taxi and drove to our hotel nearby called the Hotel Air Relax and we finished the travel day at 6:00 PM local time.
We grabbed some dinner and had something called bibimbop, and then went back to the hotel to sleepily assemble our bikes. 2 hours later both bikes were fully assembled and ready to go.
After being up for so long sleep came easy. The day went as planned and I couldn’t have been happier. The time has now come to cycle across South Korea and stick out like sore thumbs.
