Airport Misadventures

My eldest daughter returned yesterday from a three-week exchange trip to Austria. The return flight information was in my Blackberry based on the original information from the American teacher. There was either operator error in inputting the flight number and arrival time or the flight number and arrival time changed from what was in the original parent packet. Either way, waiting at the international arrival gate at the airport for over an hour for other parents to show up was not on my afternoon agenda.

People-watching is a great way to kill the time. There were the Delta attendants sporting the new, and highly controversial, red designer duds. There were the Air Lingus attendants that reflected their country’s demographics of 50% blondes and 50% brunettes. There was the bilingual couple behind me whose conversation easily flowed between French and English. There were even our across-the-street neighbors returning from a family vacation is Scotland. (Sadly, there wasn’t enough space in my vehicle to give them a ride home.) Finally, the American kids and their teacher rounded the turn to be enveloped by hugs and kisses from parents, siblings and friends.

The most important lesson that you will learn from today’s blog is to never, NEVER put your parking ticket next to your cellphone. Similar to what happens when you put your hotel key card near your cellphone, my parking ticket was demagnetized. After several attempts at the in-terminal payment kiosk, it finally dawned on me what had happened.

But when you can’t prepay your parking ticket, you have to wait in line with everyone who’s paying cash. Two lanes out of a dozen or more were Cash Only. Not that bad, only three cars ahead of me. However, when the cashier manually rung me up, the price was bumped up to the next portion of an hour. I looked at the clock in my car. One minute over the hour. One minute! And he made me pay the extra hour!

Lesson learned. Never put anything magnetized near your cellphone.