Oh for a gun

So today's 4 and a half hour flight took 15 hrs.

Booked onto the 8am flight I turn up at 6.30 to be told that there's no reservation for me between Detroit and Atlanta.
There was one - but it had been cancelled.

I have to buy a new ticket. In business. It's $650. I stump up the money and get my boarding passes.

The Aeromexico part shows as business but has me sitting in coach.
I head for the Delta counter - they tell me to go to Aeromexico in Atlanta.
I head for the lounge with my business ticket - they tell me to bugger off.

I get on the plane.
It's -14C outside and colder inside.

Land in Atlanta and walk from gate A to gate E in search of AeroMexico
They're closed.
I e-mail the travel agent.
She tells me to sort it out myself.

I call Aeromexico - it's business in their system but coach in Delta's - tough luck
I go to the Delta desk - he tells me it's not his problem until I have a business class ticket. At which point i won't have a problem.
I call Aeromexico again - they tell me that they've corrected the ticket and that I am now good to fly.
Back to Delta with my code. Nothing has changed. Other than the coach flight has now been cancelled.
They take my boarding pass and suggest that I pay another $1250 for a new ticket.

I stand my ground.
For 2 hrs.
In line.
With people hating me.

Finally.
Miraculously.
They find a way to access my records.
I'm given a boarding pass.

Flight is delayed. 6 hr layover now.
The direct flight is $500 and 4.5 hrs.
I'm paying three times that and taking three times as long. Why?
I fume.

Onto the plane and the pilot is being held at immigration.
Another hour.

We take off.
No vegetarian meal.
Stewardess insists that chicken IS vegetarian.
I ask "is a chicken a vegetable then?"
She spills wine on me
Then drops bread on me
And ignores my coffee order.

Finally land. Immigration is quick. Customs slow. Traffic Mexican.

Meet illustrator. Tad chirpy but nice.
Gareth has left champagne in my room.
I'd rather he'd left a homeless person, a large knife, a clean up kit and a 'get out of jail free card"

And now to bed.

My last trip ever with these clowns - the relief is overwhelming

Yup it's that time again...

Face down
Originally uploaded by poorusher

... flights back to Mexico mean MORE Fuckwittery

The instructions were simple

- A Direct Flight

- Nothing leaving before 9am

The flight.

An 8am flight via Atlanta with a 5 hour layover


A few calls show two things

- That a direct flight leaving at 9.20 is available

- There's an 11.10 flight out of Detroit that still makes my Atlanta connection with hours to spare

But of course the ticket has been booked as a "No Changes" thing and been approved by a moron in my office who agreed to all of the times and dates without thinking to consult me - or look at my original request.

Now last time I flew in I landed at the lovely new terminal. Terminal 2. Scheduled in at 1pm. Gareth, who was flying from New York landed at 3pm at Terminal 1. The person who arranged the travel came up with one car - which waited at Terminal 1 with my name on it.

To get from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 you need a valid boarding card.
If you've just got off a plane you don't have a valid boarding card.
Which means that Delta have to issue you with a fake boarding card and then escort you through train security (a man with an anorak and a gun) before you can be on your way. This takes 45 mins.

Then there's the fact that the ticket is issued by Aero Mexico. The code on the ticket is Aero Mexico but you can only check in on Delta. Which is in a different terminal. That you need a boarding card for. Which of course you don't have.

We've also had issues with hotels all week. I refuse to do three hotels in 5 days again, the client wants to save a few dollars (fewer than they usually spend on company funded rooftop cocktails) by having us switch around. My company isn't prepared to fund the difference (about $200 all in) and so around and around it goes again. We're staying in my favorite hotel - the only one where we know that everything works (internet, business centre, cars) and to hell with it.

Reckoning that 30% of the workng say is going on this stuff. Which is about $1700. Or $8500 a week. Fuckwittery? I'd say

Load of old cock

cock.JPG
Originally uploaded by stevenjude

Back to Mexico tomorrow. Not quite sure when as the flight details are always kept a mystery from me until the very last moment at which point they're pulled like a rather mangy rabbit from a mouldy tophat and I set the alarm for 3am.

Hoping for a more reasonable flight tomorrow. Perhaps even something direct - although holding my breath would be an act of suicide on that one.

Still Jude is coming down to Mexico city for the weekend. We have wrestling, witches with eggs that can kidnap bad spirits and trips on flower boats through fetid canals to look forward to. It'll just be nice to escape the cold and the snow for a while.

The person who made "pish" type noises at our thought of buying a 4*4 obviously had a very peculiar sense of humor though. The roads here are rarely cleared. The hills are steep. The rear whell drive on my 4.0L muscle car is prone to sending the car into all kinds of wriggles and wiggles upon set off (it's great once you're out of first gear) and I spend my life praying that the mom vans behind me are piloted by moms who really, really, really don't want to get into an accident with 'precious' on board.

The pic by the way is from a store dedicated to cock fightung magazines. Plenty of cock to admire. They do bull fighting too. Now I'd have called the store Cock and Bull (obvious but descriptive) but instead they called it something like "fa-tha-tha-thaa-thee-tha-thaaah" - the name of all stores in Mexico.

Okay taks to be taken in hand here. Ciao all

All barking mad

life.JPG
Originally uploaded by stevenjude

So finally back in Ann Arbor (at least for three more days - then it's off back to Mexico City, the traffic, the noise, the peanut brands) and I've realized that everyone here is barking mad.

For example I spent a half hour today walking out in the -10c temps with Gareth to buy some dog food. We head out and en route see a Xmas Tree decoration shaped like an Octopus. This Gareth decides he has to buy for his artist gorlfriend who became famous with a slo-mo film of her trained Octopus and is currently exhibiting a range of Christmas Tree Ornaments. In we go and are greeted by a large woman who reminds us taht the Octopus has a very large place in certain forms of 'erotic Japanese literature'. Somehow the subject turns to Xmas and Lapland (Gareth had been chief elf there some years back - I kid you not) and she asks "Did you meet any of those big teethed girls who bite the balls off reindeer?" before adding "That might be customer inappropriate. They usually keep me in the shed"

We leave, bauble in hand and get to the pet store where we're told that a 'dog tag silencer' isn't an anal invention at all but a top seller. They then gasp when Gareth picks up a harness (it looks a bit like a bra) and ask that we don't touch the 3 foot high rubber chicken as "It's been reserved as a wedding gift."

On the way back we pass a store that says "The monsters are on strike" and has cut out monsters with signs saying things like "We demand bigger closets." Turns out it's a variation on the Brooklyn Superhero Store theme (there's also a Secret Agent version in Chicago that has a frontage that says "The really boring store" and a window full of gray boxes.

Seems that monsters are too hard to innovate around ('what do monsters need? drool?') and so it's about to become a Robot Store instead. We suggest that the Robot store is dropped on top of the monster store and that they have monster feet and monster goo dripping out of the front door where they were squished. It seems we're as mad as the rest of town.

30 mins, 3 mad people. Lots of gifts. It's good to be home