A new beginning (again)

Well, here I go again. The nomad in me can't sit still and wants to go places. Today is the day I go on to Seattle to join Amazon (Sandhya will follow in November after she wraps a few things at her office in South City).

The flight was scheduled for a departure time of 12:45 p.m. which means (I thought) we should leave for the airport at 11:00a.m. at the latest. We did leave at 11:00a.m., but realized that I had forgotten to get my leather jacket. So we had to head back home to pick up the jacket. This meant a loss of ten minutes from the schedule. I could feel myself becoming a bit antsy (you guys know I am paranoid about keeping time).

When we got to the airport, it was 11:30a.m. (or so). I was flying United and so we went to the United counter. There I saw a placard that said that e-ticket check-ins would close 45 minutes before departure time. This of course had the effect of racheting up my anxiousness level! Oh, by the way, I think I was quite artful in hiding my anxiety from Sandhya (I can hear her say 'Yeah, right').

Has anyone noticed that the check-in counters are all self-serve now?

Anyway, we got into what was a suspiciously short line. Turns out it was the line for oversized luggage that needed to be checked in. Sandhya said that this didn't look right. We looked around and she suggested we go to the other line where there was a long line-up. This was indeed the correct queue.

And it was a very long line. It was now around 11:40 and I was starting to get worried. There must have been about 50 people ahead of us in the line. But to United's credit, I must say they had lots of self-serve counters open. The only problem was people in the line seemed to think that they should only go to the counter nearest to the head of the line. Unbelievable, but true. So there I was, eagerly eyeing all these vacant counters and seriously considering doing the 'Indian' thing by rushing to the counter to check in, like a 'Walla' (after all, all those years of travel by Indian Railways must mean something), so high was my anxiety level.

Naturally I was muttering in what I thought was a low tone (but Sandhya could here it) that the line was full of incompentent idiots who couldn't recognize a self-serve counter if it hit them in the eye.

But it turned out there were more smart ones than idiots so we were able to get to a self-serve counter and check me in.

It was now aleady 11:50a.m., so I decided I should go through security right away. Guess what? There was this super slow guy in front of me who filled up the trays with his belongings (very, ..., very slowly) and then promptly forgot to take his baggage with him! This right away rang alarm bells in my head and I tell the security gal that there is this abandoned bag in the security area. It takes her a while to realize that it is actually an abandonned (or forgotten bag--although how anyone can forget a bag is beyond me--even I couldn't do that). The funny thing is she comes to me and asks me if it was my bag! I said no! She then go backwards asking all those people behind me if it is their bag. What incompetence.

The next part will be continued in part II.