As many of you may know (and many more may not), my beloved agent, Daphne Unfeasible, lives in Denver. This is a fairly recent development. She was your standard, high-powered fancy New York agent—and then she met the dashing Rexroth Implausible and decided to merge their empires. She now runs Unfeasible Enterprises from her mountain stronghold in Denver.

As it ALSO happens, Daphne, ever the professional agent, was born 36 hours before me (to get the lay of the land and set up some deals). In fact, many of us have birthdays at the same time—including Rexroth, and our friend J. Krimble. It has often been our tradition to spend our birthdays together. This year, Daphne suggested that we do so in Denver.

So yesterday morning, J. Krimble, his female companion Pixie Potpie, and I all headed off to the airport to catch what was supposed to be an easy set of flights to Denver—one from New York to Chicago, and then another from Chicago to Denver a few minutes later. We had attempted to get a non-stop flight, but it turns out MANY PEOPLE wanted to come to Denver when we did, and we thought, what’s a quick transfer between planes?

And so, our story begins.

WELCOME TO CHICAGO

“I’ve never been to Chicago,” I said, as we came in over Lake Michigan. “They say your first trip to Chicago is always the best. Doesn’t Lake Michigan look like the BELLY OF AN ENORMOUS DRAGON from the plane?”

“I’ve been to Chicago once before,” Pixie said.

“Oh,” I replied. “Well, they say that your second trip to Chicago is always the worst.”

J. Krimble was looking at his watch in concern.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Technically, we have forty minutes to make the connection, but we’re almost fifteen minutes late.”

“What are you worried about?” I asked. “It’s not like they would sell us a ticket if it was impossible to make the connection. This was the suggested route. The airline PLANNED this trip!”

“Right!” Pixie said. “And we have, what, twenty minutes to get over there? And they know we’re supposed to be on the plane.”

When we landed, the automatic status alert text I had signed up for blipped on to my phone.

“Here we go,” I said, feeling very efficient. “Gate B29.”

“B29?” J. Krimble said. “We just passed that gate. It’s, like . . . WAY over there. It’s going to take us forever to get there. We’re going to have to run.”

I didn’t really believe this, and neither did Pixie. We truly believed that United Airlines had our backs. (I did mention that this was UNITED AIRLINES, right? I really want to get that fact across.)

But we agreed, mostly to appease the worried J. Krimble, that we would all run over to our new gate. And run we did! All the way across Chicago airport, through an amazing connecting hall with pastel glowing walls and a rainbow of rippling, disco-like lights overhead. I wanted to stay and do some dancing, but was dragged on. We ran and ran and ran. We ran along moving sidewalks, and up escalators, and were rewarded by getting to our gate a full ten minutes early. All three of us ran up to the desk and said, “HiweareherefortheflighttoDenver.”

And the woman behind the counter tipped her head to the side and regarded us in the same way dogs do when you make an interesting noise.

“Oh, that plane is gone,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Five little words, delievered without the slightest amount of care, applied with the light touch like the hand of the fairies as they paint on the morning dew. Oh, that plane? Is gone! Tra la la!

For a moment, we could not process this information. “But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

Because we didn’t just . . . evaporate, the woman was forced to take a better look at us and accept our presence.

“It left ten minutes early,” she said, not without a touch of pride. Look at the good job we at UNITED AIRLINES have done today!

“It WHAT?”

“And it was oversold,” she added, as if implying that we would NEVER have been on that plane, even though we were fully ticketed passengers. As if we should have known better.

“But . . . “ we said. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

She glanced at the tickets out of politeness and gave us slips of paper that more or less said the following: IT APPEARS THAT YOU HAVE PURCHASED ONE OF OUR “TICKETS”! SOMETIMES, WHEN WE AT UNITED AIRLINES SELL YOU A TICKET, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE WILL ACTUALLY PUT YOU ON AN AIRPLANE. IF YOU LIKE, YOU CAN TAKE THIS TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, WHERE ONE OF OUR REPRESENTATIVES WILL ASSIST YOU IN THE PROCESS OF SUCKING IT.

“There’s an 11:09 to Denver,” the woman added. “But you probably won’t make that either. We board in a few minutes, and it’s way oversold. It’s always oversold.” Tra la la!

So we ran all the way to customer service, where we got in a big, long line. While waiting in the big, long line, we had time to process that information. The customer service woman was in a good humor, and seemed to regard our problem as a pleasant dilemma, not unlike a brain teaser.

“Oh, you’ll never make THAT flight,” she said with a smile. “ALL the flights to Denver are sold out. Oversold.”

“But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets and pieces of paper. “But . . . we have these tickets and pieces of paper.”

She took the tickets and pieces of paper.

“Oh, see,” she said. “You didn’t have seat assignments for Denver.”

“They wouldn’t give us seat assignments for Denver,” J. Krimble said.

“Your seats were on standby,” the woman said, still smiling.

“We weren’t standby,” I said. “We bought these tickets months ago. These are full tickets. We were promised seats. On the airplane. To Denver. It’s not our fault that your computer wouldn’t assign us a seat, or that the plane took off ten minutes early, or that the other plane was ten minutes late.”

But I said it nicely, because there is no reason to be rude! But this was all true. We were not standby passengers. We were three people who were supposed to be on their way to Denver.

“I KNOW you aren’t standby,” she said. “But you HAD NO SEATS.”

I ask you, readers. What do you do with that?

“Now what I CAN do,” she said happily, “is put you all on a plane to Tulsa.”

“A plane to TULSA?” I repeated.

Tulsa, for those of your unfamiliar with American geography, is in Oklahoma. Which is not anywhere near Denver, Colorado. It’s not even in the area of Denver, Colorado. So I wasn’t entirely sure why she would think we would be happy about going there. But it seemed like there was a possible plane we could get on in Tulsa that would take us to Denver.

There was no apology offered in any of this—it was all offered as if this was a kind of bonus. “Six more hours of travel!” she was suggesting. “A trip an airport in Oklahoma!”

We asked her what the alternative was, and she made it more or less clear that either we were going to go to Tulsa, or we were going to live in the Chicago airport.

We said we would go to Tulsa. New tickets and pieces of paper were produced.

“Can we sit together?” J. Krimble asked.

“No,” the woman replied. “But this plane to Tulsa is so small, you’ll PRACTIALLY BE ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.”

Our Tulsa tickets required us to go over to F terminal, reachable by a tiny shuttle that looked like it had been produced in Stalinist Russia—grim and gray, with foam popping out of the seats. F terminal didn’t seem as loved as B or C terminal. Our best option to grab some food was a very angry sandwich shop where they threw together some sandwiches that exploded in the bags.

“I feel like they just don’t care,” I said, looking at the total collapse of my sandwich. It had exploded to pieces in the bag. “It’s just a bag of sandwich now.”

“Would you like one of your birthday presents now?” J. Krimble asked.

I said I would. A small wrapped object was placed on the table.

“I would give you yours,” I said, “but it is on its way to Denver.” This was true. I had checked my bag, but inside, there were birthday presents for everyone. I wondered if I would ever see it again. Then I unwrapped my present, only to find this!

Yes! The Unauthorized Biography of Robert Pattison, star of Twilight!

I stared at the book for a moment and flipped through the very unauthorized photographs.

“This is wonderful!” I said. “Now I am going to read this to you. Let’s begin . . .”

SCENE: CHICAGO AIRPORT, A CROWDED GATE

It was Pixie’s turn to read. J. Krimble was looking moderately suicidal. We were on page 15.

“Please stop,” he said.

“No, no,” I said. “This is my birthday present. We are going to read it. Please continue, Pixie.”

“This book is like, fifty pages long,” J. Krimble protested. “And forty of them are about the filming of Twilight. And thirty of them are about his HAIR.”

“Yes,” I said happily. “That is why I like it.”

“Listen to this,” Pixie said, reading, “Rob’s nicknames are: ‘Rob, Patty (what his friends call him), RPattz (what fans call him—though he thinks it sounds ‘like an antacid pill’), Spunk Ransom (long story!)”

“Spunk Ransom?” I said. “I want to hear a story that ends up with you getting the name ‘Spunk Ransom.’ I want to hear it right now.”

“Next fact,” she said, reading on. “‘If he weren’t an actor, Rob would be: a pianist (or Jack Nicholson).’”

“There’s already a Jack Nicholson,” I replied. “Maybe Jack Nicholson is just a job you can have. Maybe Rob Pattison will be the next Jack Nicholson!”

“It also says he doesn’t like children, and it says there’s a picture where it looks like he wants to eat a baby. There are a lot of exclamation points in this book . . .”

J. Krimble put his head on his knees.

The woman at the desk wasn’t lying about the size of the plane. We had to duck to get inside, and the jetway was two feet long. In the front, a very precious little girl was talking to her father.

“I’ve named the plane!” she said, in her adorable little girl voice. “I’m named it AMELIA!”

I turned to look at J. Krimble, who crammed in a few seats behind me. He mouthed the words: NO THAT IS A BAD NAME FOR A PLANE.

I opened my Rob Pattison book for a moment, then put my head back and . . . .

zzzZZZZZzZzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

SCENE: TULSA AIRPORT

I was very groggy when we landed.

“Why are we in Oklahoma?” I asked.

“Because United Airlines hates us,” J. Krimble said.

We had LOTS OF TIME to kill in Tulsa airport, so we wanted to see all we could. The first thing we saw was a police guard at the women’s room right at our gate. We watched as a small team of policemen took a sniffer dog inside.

“Tulsa is exciting,” I said.

We decided almost immediately that we liked Tulsa, largely because they had a large display of these shirts:

But looking at t-shirts could only entertain us for so long, so I pulled out my new book.

CAN ANYONE RESIST?

When they finally called our flight, J. Krimble went up to make sure we were actually on it.

“Is this plane really full?” he asked. “Can we sit together?”

“Oh,” the woman at the counter laughed. “It’s SO full. It’s . . . 101% full.”

“That is one percent more full than it should be,” J. Krimble said, politely.

We all got middle seats. I took a picture mid-flight to commemorate the moment:

ME

And so . . . many hours and states later, we arrived in Denver. And there was Daphne, waiting for me.

We were immediately struck by the fact that they had a carosel for normal bags, and then another one with long, tall compartments, perfect for a person to ride in standing up! I ran for this, but Daphne caught my arm.

“No,” she said. “For skis.”

“But . . .”

“For skis.”

I walked past, sadly . . . every moment twitching to hop on board and ride around. We went off searching for my bag at the baggage service desk.

“Oh yes,” they said, “it’s right there, in the middle of the floor.”

United Airlines, faithful to the last, had left my unattended bag in the middle of the floor for what I assume was about six hours.

So, if you are considering a trip across the country, why not try UNITED AIRLINES?

Now that we have recovered, I resume work on the BLOG OF LOVE, which I hope to post TOMORROW. Thank you all who sent in your romance questions. I study them now, and hope to provide you with the very best of advice for your Valentine’s Day. If you have any questions to get in at the last minute, please ask, and I will certainly try to address them.

Posted: Saturday, February 14th, 2009 @ 2:15 am
Categories: Daphne Unfeasible, birthdays, flying, travel.
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