Argh. I'm in the terminal at BWI, waiting for a Southwest flight. Now, Southwest is my favorite airline, and if I'm going home to Tulsa I don't have much choice but to connect somewhere so flying on my airline of choice means that I get to make the trek up to BWI.

Now, the trek up to BWI isn't so bad. It's accessible via transit so I don't have to bug anybody for a ride or pay for a shuttle (hellooooo, Dulles), but taking transit means getting on the Metro, changing trains on the Metro, getting to Union Station, buying a ticket, getting on Amtrak, taking that train to the BWI station, then getting on a shuttle bus that will get you to the terminal. This is in contrast to Ronald Reagan (sic) Washington National Airport, which is accessible via Metro alone, although I still have to change trains to get there.

Anyway, there was a 10:00 Metroliner that was my target, but I didn't get out of the house when planned and I barely made it to Union Station in time for the 10:10 Northeast Direct. So I went to a ticket machine, put in my credit card, punched through the process to get a ticket for the train leaving in five minutes, and then the receipt printed out. I didn't realize until I was on the train that it wasn't my receipt. The stupid machine printed out the receipt for some other random person's transaction, meaning that I had no receipt and no ticket. Stupid machine.

Anyway, the conductor on the train at least sold me another ticket for the ticket price instead of charging me the extra seven dollars that they normally attach if you buy your ticket on the train. I think I may have lost 19 bucks, since the conductor told me to talk to the ticket people at the BWI station, and they told me they couldn't do anything about it and I'd have to talk to the ticket people at Union Station when I get back. Ugh.

Anyway, all this means that I got to the terminal at BWI still an hour ahead of scheduled departure time. Now. Southwest does open boarding, but you get a numbered boarding pass corresponding to your position in the checkout line. Whatever. All the seats are the same. But they normally start boarding an hour before departure, so me getting to the gate at 10:58 for an 11:55 departure should have been no sweat. Appropriately low boarding pass number, get a bagel and a coffee, and then get on the plane quickly enough to ensure an exit row window seat.

It was not to be.

My boarding pass number is 66.

Now, I love Southwest. They have the right attitude to this whole flying thing - get in, get out, badabing, badaboom. But they fly to podunk towns, and the people who need to fly to those towns are about what you'd expect (not your standard frequent bidness travelers in other words). So those people don't really get the fact that all the seats are the same and they're all getting to the same place at the same time. So now I'm stuck behind a bunch of people who just don't understand how to get onto a plane quickly, how to get off quickly, and how the whole carryon baggage thing works. So an hour before departure, 65 other people had already checked in to board this plane. And I'm going to have to wait for them to waddle down the aisle, futz around with their too-large and too-numerous carryon bags, and take my precious exit row window seat. Bastards.

Oh, and the gate was in Terminal B, whose only food vending options are a sullen looking black woman with a cart and some iffy "pastries." So I didn't get the bagel or the coffee. Luckily I carry a Clif Bar in my laptop bag for emergency food rations so I'm not dying, but this is not an auspicious beginning.

Argh.

(2000-05-13)