United We Stand

We were returning home to Hawaii after attending the graduation of our daughter at Humboldt State, the northern most outpost of the California university system.  It had been a glorious week of ceremonies and socializing with her friends and colleagues in the lovely eccentric small town of Arcata;  a time of meeting (and liking) her boyfriend and his family;  active days of hiking high above dramatic rocky sea coasts, visiting towering redwood forests, and exploring beaches, bays, marshes and wildlife sanctuaries.   Before boarding the 20-seater prop plane in tiny Eureka/Arcata airport, we passed through the world’s shortest and mellowest security line – and quite possibly the most thorough: the TSA guy chatted up each one of us – out of friendliness or to a purpose, we could not be sure.  As the small plane flew south, I gazed out the window watching the long California coastline pass far below under a bright mid-day sun and ruminated about the fascinating people we had met in this progressive college town.  As our plane began its descent into sprawling San Francisco airport, I recalled an after-grad party conversation with a retired airline pilot who mentioned this particular airport was not his favorite.   What was it he had said? The runways were built too close together, planes could only land one at a time and this tended to back up operations … or something like that. Ah, well, we had landed with a thump but safely, so I dismissed this line of thought and focused on strategy for finding our connecting flight to Honolulu.  As we deplaned near Terminal 1, helpful airline staff and clear signage directed us efficiently to shuttles going to Terminal 3… whereupon all efficiency terminated. 

When my college graduate was a child of 4 or 5 years old, our household experienced periodic blackouts. Despite living no more than two miles distance from the biggest power plant on our island, we occasionally had inexplicable lapses in electricity. Ultimately minor inconveniences, when it happens, such experiences can leave one feeling…well, powerless.  When the lights and household robots shut off with that dramatic low whir followed by sudden silence, my husband and I would begin speaking in low reassuring tones so the kids could find us in the dark as we got out lanterns, stopped cooking, and looked outside to see how many neighbors were affected.  It was not unusual to look down and see our tiny girl standing next to us holding up an enormous flashlight, trembling with adrenalin, determined to be useful in the crisis.

It helps to have a job during a disaster.  So it was when our United airlines flight delay went from bad to worse to nightmare.  Your heart always sinks when they announce flight #123 is delayed - our scheduled 4:30 pm lift off was moved until 6 pm - but you allow yourself to be heartened by the fact that a new departure time is announced.  Surely this means they have identified the problem and are taking appropriate steps to remedy it.  You actually become hopeful as they begin boarding those needing extra time or paying extra money.  

Once on the plane, you settle into your seat, even begin watching a movie –one that your husband never wants to watch - on the cool little individualized screen at your seat, until you begin to wonder at the continuous lack of moving scenery outside the window.  After a long time on the tarmac comes the dreaded announcement. It is phrased in the vaguest of terms:  a mechanical issue is being checked out. Uh-oh, not a good sign.  Some time later, passengers are given the option to deplane for 30 minutes, and about half choose to do so.  Peter and I stay on board, escaping into our respective films to keep troublesome thoughts at bay.  The movies soon halt for a brief announcement that they will close the front door, power down the aircraft and start it up again.  We later hear that no such explanation is provided to those who deplaned, setting off archetypal fears of abandonment.  I guess hitting the reset button proved unsuccessful because before we could finish our movies we are told the flight is definitively delayed due to mechanical difficulties and are instructed to leave the aircraft and go to a designated location for complimentary meal coupons. With a collective groan, we head for “Customer Service” where the first of many long lines await us.  From here on out, conflicting information and mixed messages abound.  In the vacuum created by an absence of accurate info, rumors run wild.  We hear and spread to our fellow travelers news both accurate and totally false as it turns out.  Gate agents, Customer Service reps, and the United flight board seem to be on totally different wavelengths and as a result we march back and forth between gates 82 and 86 like toy soldiers.  One agent came out to a queue by Gate 86 to tell us we can sit down and they will bring hotel and meal vouchers to us.  As she seemed to tell only one portion of the crowd, we helpfully pass the word down the line, whereupon some gullibly find a seat, while others stubbornly stand their ground.  As it turns out, either this was an agent gone rogue, a local San Fran anarchist masquerading as an airline rep, or her common sense approach was subsequently over-ruled, because we are soon all back in the queue. 

As I waited by a window in a patch of sun charging my cell, a crew member sat next to me with his mobile, charger and plastic-encased Starbucks salad, so I casually grilled him for intelligence. He said there was no identifiable mechanical problem, but an indicator light had come on, and they can’t fly over the ocean with that light on, so they either had to find someone higher up who would ok a flight over the water, or find a new aircraft. Even if they got the plane cleared for flight, the crew was going on “illegal” (aka overtime) and they’d probably need a new crew.  He thought there was still a chance we’d get out tonight.  He was right on all counts, except the last. We did not get out that night and the small cadre of beleaguered United airline agents had to book all 300 of us, one at a time, into various hotels in the wider San Francisco area.   
  

While standing in the line speculating wildly with our fellow former passengers, I noticed an attractive blond woman wearing fashionable dark brown glasses who said nothing, unlike most others in the vicinity. Peter later said he watched her eyes begin to well-up with tears just before she asked if anyone spoke Italian or French.  Like Kelly with her flashlight, I volunteered that I spoke a little French.  I was not being modest.   Je parle francais mais un petit peu was perhaps the very first phase I learned to speak in high school French class some 40 years ago, and have not studied or spoken much since then, aside from dusting off the cobwebs for the occasional Tahitian visitor to Hawaii and two marvelous but brief visits to Paris over the past decade.  I credit my francophilia and less-than-abysmal French accent to students who lived in our home and taught me songs and words as a child.  Alors, the tongue is willing but the memory wanting. 

The blond woman indicates she is Italian; her husband speaks some French and is nearby with their young sleeping sons. She dials her cell a couple times before a portly man grumpily answers the call and we begin our exchanges in pidgin French, Italian, English, plus poor-man’s sign language.  Her name is Nadia, the family organizer and communicator, focused and upbeat despite their 30+ hour journey thus far from Milan to Frankfurt to stuck in ‘Frisco.  It is Nadia who dragged husband Amadeo  and the boys half way around the globe to attend a wedding in Waikiki, and he expressed in multiple languages his fervent wish to be back at his house,  his bed,  his country,  eating his food,  hunting truffles with his dog (Je voudrais revenir a ma maison! a mon pays…avec mon chien).   Throughout the ordeal, his mood ranged from dour cynicism to exhausted exasperation.  “Anywhere I go it rains on my head”, he exhaled at one point.  When it finally looked like we might actually get to Hawaii, Amadeo curbed his enthusiasm, predicting, “If I am in Hawaii, it will rain.”

In the midst of the debacle, many fellow travelers remain remarkably good humored, having decided that la resistance is futile. Others are outraged and take it out on the front liners who have the thankless job of fronting for a totally dysfunctional system.  One man can be heard yelling into his cell phone at some faceless United agent he’s managed to reach, probably in Mumbai, apoplectic with impotent rage.  Others try end runs around the endless lines and their own sense of helplessness.  Like buzzing flies, they dive bomb the agent desks from the sides, pressing for attention to their special needs, wanting someone to hear their righteous indignation.  Occasionally these anti-social tactics do yield short term results as the staff, like harried mothers coping with a horde of children, make the calculus that it’s faster to first deal with the hyper-activists, before returning to those quietly smoldering next in line.   But these selfishly got gains are mostly illusory, in much the same way that switching lanes on the freeway makes me feel as though I’m getting to my destination faster…until I notice the cars I  just left in the dust are now passing me by. 

I am no Mother Teresa.  I have had my share of affecting assertive behavior in the face of the unreasonable and unresponsive, of refusing to take absurdities lying down, of tilting at windmills because I hate indignities and injustice.  But really, once you get that your entire foreseeable future is squarely in the hands of an under-staffed, sleep-deprived, stressed out crew; that you are a prisoner in their weird little world, the reality begins to dawn that it no longer matters who is right. The question simply becomes what survival strategy is most effective, wastes the least energy, gets us safely home and out of the alien hell-hole into which we have innocently tumbled.

Talk calmly and politely to the guards, take deep breaths when your fellow inmates try anti-social tricks, laugh at the absurdities that abound.  When bored, chat casually with fellow travelers- they may later prove useful.  Form alliances with the more like-minded (or least obnoxious) ones. Trade information, theories, pool survival gear.  Take all announcements from airline staff and crowd-sourced information with a grain of salt.  Ask several different people in a line what they think they are lining up for – seek triangulation.  Watch folks’ faces as they leave the front of the line: smiles of success? frowns or tears of frustration?  Let a few people who really need it go ahead of you.  All these things remind you of where true control lies, and can feel oddly empowering.
    

Still, everyone has their own coping strategies. "Basta! Basta!!" exclaimed Amadeo cursing the indignities as he stood by the United counter waiting for a distracted agent to acknowledge his existence, knowing no one understood precisely what he was saying. “Positivo” comments Nadia to me, as the shuttle wends its way through the darkness to some nameless hotel on the outskirts of the city.  She has been gamely pointing out freeway signs that read “San Francisco” to her sleepy boys, trying to peak their interest and optimism.  It sounds to me as though she is saying “Look, see we’re really here, in the US, in San Francisco, the adventure has begun….”

"Positivity, dear mama," advises my son via text, as we sit eating an 11 pm dinner in the hotel sports bar.  And Peter and I were in fact actively enjoying a comfortable in-between moment, suspended between worlds, to sip our wine and beer and reflect on the bizarre day.

“As your hands give hope, you have hope to hold”, reads the barely poetic message on a lotion bottle in the airplane bathroom, however hope was short-lived as only a wee bit could be coaxed from the pump.  Since when did travel toiletries start carrying self-help messages?   If we needed more evidence that terrible travel has become the norm, it can be found in hotel and airline bathrooms where toiletries are full of unsolicited advice for the weary traveler.  The soap wrapper in the hotel bathroom reads “Relax” and I almost had a fit trying to tear it open with wet hands.  It took a towel and scissors to complete the operation, and by then my calm quotient was diminished.  The shampoo and conditioner also carried words like “calm, cooling, relaxing...”  They obviously know their clientele: stressed out travelers, booted off airplanes and herded like sheep to graze at the hotel sinks for a few hours.  In fact, upon arrival at our nameless hotel ready for a late dinner and bed,  we again found ourselves in a check-in line witnessing  yet another drama unfold, this one unrelated to ours, as an angry Asian American man and his girlfriend argued with the immigrant Chinese hotel staff about lost luggage and who had it last.  As the yelling escalated, I turned once more to our perplexed Italian visitors.  Mi dispiacie, I apologize in Italian, shaking my head, and turn to French to assure them America is not always like this: Ce n’est pas toujours comme ca ici…or is it?   

At the crack of dawn, we arranged to meet our Italian family in time for a shuttle, and once they had us all herded into our pens at the airport gate, our flight was promptly delayed.  After the short night’s sleep, the boys, Filippo and Tomasso, were transformed into balls of curious energy ready for a nutritious American airport breakfast.  Amadeo wants to treat us to breakfast with his courtesy meal vouchers, but there is another line to stand in (new boarding passes are required for the rescheduled flight to replace the ones they gave us last night), so Peter and Nadia take this shift while Amadeo, the boys and I go off in search of eats. We end up at the food court eating Japanese food because it is the first thing they see that they can point to.  This proves to be yet another cross-cultural adventure in which 5 Asian staff are trying to help by all talking at once in heavily accented English,  asking repeatedly and at escalating volume  questions such as whether they want white rice or fried rice. Aside from asking “how much?”, Amadeo has given up and is just talking to them in Italian.  I’m trying my best to interpret but do not recall most useful food words, such as sushi, rice bowl and teriyaki sauce.  They end up eating plain chicken, white rice and steamed vegetables covered in catsup.  Nadia expertly shows up with green tea, yogurt and granola for her breakfast and the boys eat most of it.  Over our meal, we women exchange business cards with email contacts and I learn that Nadia is an avvocato – a lawyer.  Amadeo sulks until Nadia informs us in the tri-lingual pidgin we have fallen into that her husband’s “passione” is truffle hunting with his dogs, and his face almost lights up as he speaks of it.  The boys are now intently trying to speak to us in English, motivated by the belief they will actually get to Hawaii and do some of the stuff they point to in their guide books. The elder of the boys is a reserved, cerebral, dignified boy of 12 who understands more English than he lets on.  The 9 year old is a pistol; active, impulsive, emotional, and a constant irritant to his father.  He is determined to communicate with us about the size of tiger sharks and demonstrate how he can “number to 100” in English –getting as far as 25 before his cool-head brother stops him (in perfect English) with “ok, we get the idea”. Both boys enjoy fishing near their family farm in northwest Italy and hope to do so in the Waikiki jungle.  We are not encouraging.
  

We did eventually arrive in Honolulu, an outcome never truly in doubt, simply forgotten in the furor over unmet expectations.  My last advice to la famiglia Italiano was to walk with us to Baggage Claim rather than wait for the famous “Wiki-Wiki Shuttle” – a name I declined to translate given our recent run of bachi luck.  As we walk outdoors onto the breezeway,  I feel the first touch of Hawaii’s nahenahe trade winds on my face and my heart fills with what can only be described as aloha. A gentle, moist, plumeria-scented breeze envelops us, hydrating breath, plumping up dry skin and bringing curl to limp hair.  Feel this air, I motion, there is nothing like this in the whole wide world. 

The last time I saw them, at Honolulu baggage claim, Nadia was gathering up the luggage and Amadeo had his hand cocked hoping  to give his fleet-footed youngest a swat in punishment for some expression of exuberance at being released from the confines of a 60 hour journey. For us, this transitory international relationship made the travel travesty more adventure than adversity.  True, we lost a day we might have spent comfortably sleeping in our bed, eating our food, doing our laundry. Instead we arrived home richer than when we left, my notebooks stuffed with fabulous writing fodder and with a standing invitation to visit the family farm near Savona, an Italian Riviera port town, known as the birthplace of Cristofo Columbo (Christoper Columbus) and reportedly for, yum, fresh truffles. 

More than once on this unexpected  journey the sardonic travel humor of David Sedaris came to mind, including one essay in which he claims flight attendants confided to him about  a practice known as  “crop dusting”,  purposely passing gas as they walk down the aisle and attend to the more demanding irascible passengers.  Further proof, as if one needed it, that what goes around comes around; that in the surprising twists and turns of life, fellowship and fortune are often found in the most unexpected of circumstances.