Premonitions

What can you do about them? We tend to ignore them, dismissing the gut feeling as mild paranoia, silliness, superstitions or some story your mother told you when you were a little kid – not swimming after you eat, or drinking eight glasses of water a day.

I had weird feelings about this trip to Hawaii. I wasn’t excited about it. Why would I be? I didn’t have some exotic vacation planned, nor did I have something to do, besides buy a bed. I was going home. We all do that. But with three airlines biting the dust last week and American canceling flights quicker than gamblers discard losing para-mutual tickets after the last horse trots across the finish line, I expected the trip to be one big head ache.

I became suspicious when last week I checked my seat assignment and discovered I didn’t have one. Since I was flying United not the cattle car Southwest, this was strange. More suspicion rose when I checked in and was told the assignment would be made at the gate.

In Albany 99% of the time the security check runs smoothly and takes ten minutes, tops. This morning the line wove through the upstairs staging area, down the walkway to the parking garage, cued up at the foot of the escalators held in place by a TSA agent sipping a cup of coffee, then snaked behind the stairway and strung out down the hallway toward baggage claim. Fortunately, I am the kind of flyer who prefers to sit in the waiting area for two hours instead of fretting in security for twenty minutes. There was plenty of time and surprisingly, it didn’t take long when I uncharacteristically engaged in conversation with a young Nebraskan woman who had been at Albany Med yesterday interviewing for medical school. $44,000 per year.

At the gate the agent called passengers names for seat assignments. Not mine. Boarding started. Hum? I slid up to the agent in the pin striped uniform. “I don’t have a boarding seat assignment.” Politely he asked me to wait while he made an announcement. Looking for one volunteer. Holy crap.

I gave volunteering consideration. Traveling alone. No one expecting me on the far side. No hassles. Just call Expedia and change my car reservation. I told the agent I’d consider the free round trip ticket to any continental destination. When he asked me where I was going he cringed. Apparently, it is not so easy to fly to Hawaii.

I’d soon found out. With no volunteers coming forward, and because I was the last to check in….I was not….I got involuntarily bumped. Beginning with the first flight I ever took the day I enlisted in the Army and flew from Albany to Philadelphia (and decided I didn’t care too much for it.) I’ve never been involuntarily bumped.

So I’m waiting in Albany, waiting the next United flight to Chicago to LA to San Fran. There I will get a hotel, compliments of the airline, spend the night and fly to Hawaii in the morning. Yes, I got the free ticket too. Happily, I’m not on American.

Of course, the bags managed to get on the flight. I watched my Tibetan and Navajo rugs take off without me. Hoping I see them in Kona tomorrow when I arrive.

The next weird feeling I have is my sister reading this and thinking I should be working on her website. I'm not in Chicago yet.