THE MILLINIUM PHILCON
OR, WHAT I DID ON MY LABOR DAY VACATION
Part 1: The Flight In
by Helen E. Davis
I woke up early on Friday morning, kissed the husband and children goodbye (thinking gleefully that he would have to take care of them by himself for four whole days!) And headed off to the airport on the north side of town. The first flight would take me to Washington D.C. and then, after a short layover, a second would take me to Philadelphia, where I would arrive just after noon. I would have about ten minutes to catch the train, which would then carry me to Center City, where I would then walk seven blocks to get to the Barnes and Nobles where the N3F offsite program was being held. Having helped plan it, I wanted to catch at least part of it. After the program ended, I would make my way to the convention center, and then register for the Convention and secure my hotel room. The key to making all this work, I thought, was carry-on luggage. So I packed everything I would need for the weekend into a soft bag and my backpack.
The best laid plans of mice and men do not take into account the variability of airplane schedules.
I reached the Dayton airport in good time and parked in the economy lot. No shuttle this morning. I ended up having to hike the distance, hauling my luggage, which was turning out to be a wee bit heavy. Nothing you would notice until mid-way through a five block walk. So I stopped and bought a luggage carrier, as well as some locks for my luggage, having just realized that I had forgotten those. I made it to the gate, received instructions to gate-check my black bag and carrier, and in due time presented my ticket to the agent. On the other side of the gate was a set of stairs.
Uh-oh.
Now instead of carrying a slightly heavy bag, I had to carry a slightly heavy bag and a slightly awkward folded luggage carrier, plus wearing a bulging backpack. And when I reached the bottom of the stairs and opened the door onto the tarmac, I realized my worst fears. I would be flying to Washington D.C. in a turboprop. A small turboprop, the kind with the stairs as part of the door and no overhead space. A packed turboprop with barely enough room to fit my bulging backpack under the seat in front of me. I wondered at the sensibility of bringing along my laptop computer, but I had promised Franz Miklas that I would use it to show off some of his artwork. And I had to have my money, and my camera, and my fingernail polish kit ( a badly split fingernail required constant maintenance), and a paperback novel, and my WIP....
Sometimes I give serious thought to adopting a monastic lifestyle.
So there I sat, along with all the other human sardines in a not so slowly heating airplane on a bright August day, waiting. And waiting. Finally a male voice announced over the speaker, "Could we have two volunteers willing to give up their seats and take a later flight? We have a weight balance problem, and if two people would leave the flight, we can put all the luggage on."
It took a few minutes, but then the volunteers spoke up, including one woman who announced loudly that she didn't want to be on an airplane which was that close to the weight limit. The packers finished their job, and finally the plane took of with its load of slightly more nervous than usual passengers, only twenty minutes late. And my layover time shaved to ten minutes.
When we arrived at Washington, I found that I had to go in, down a short hallway, through the terminal gate, down the main hallway, through the terminal gate, and up another short hallway. Not enough time to assemble the luggage carrier, so I was hauling everything in my arms. And as I reached the main hallway, I heard my name being called. "Last call for Helen Davis." "I'm here!" I yelled, and ran. I ran through terminal gate, ran out to my flight, ran up the stairs folded down from the airplane – another small turboprop – and found my seat. Then I was moved to another seat, for the flight attendant needed to balance the weight of the airplane both front to back and side to side.
And then we waited. We waited because the flight crew was late. Then we waited some more. The airplane got hotter, the air thicker. Finally they told us to go back into the terminal and wait there, because the flight was delayed for an hour due to congestion in Philadelphia. I grabbed some lunch and discovered, when I tried to phone Catherine Mintz, the main organizer for the Barnes and Noble event, that I had made a critical error. I hadn't gotten her phone number.
I went back to the terminal and found that the flight had been delayed an additional twenty minutes due to weather conditions.
We did make it safely to Philadelphia, an hour and a half late. I stopped to go to the bathroom, and missed the train into the city.
When I finally did get on the train, after sitting on the hot platform for nearly thirty minutes, I considered whether I wanted to walk the five city blocks to Barnes and Nobles on the bare chance that the event was still going on. Already overheated and slightly dehydrated, I felt that it would be better to go straight to the convention center and try to catch up with Catherine later. I was staying at the main hotel, and she knew that. Surely she would leave a message for me when I didn't show up at Barnes and Noble?
I hoped so, for we had a dinner planned together.
ADDENDUM: Catherine Mintz says, "Meanwhile, while all this is going on, Catherine Mintz is supervising the off-site event that would not begin and and would not end. She wonders, occasionally, what has happened to Helen, for she is carrying a large box, strapped with a handle, that contains a sword: Helen's. Ever so often she, or her husband, call the hotel to see if Helen has checked in. No. She goes back to keeping chaos under nominal control, wondering where another of her readers has gone and discovering that there is no mike...."