A Staysniak in Jilin Presents for Your Reading Enjoyment:
"Stranded: A Total Over Dramatization of a Common Traveling Problem"
The trip home from Jilin City to New York usually goes as thus; I take a taxi to Longjia International Airport, located a few miles outside of the city of Changchun. From there, I it's only a short flight to Beijing, where after going through customs and an always incredibly thorough security check, it make it to my gate, and then from there it is just a roughly thirteen hour flight to New York City, and a forty-five minute drive from my home in Ridgefield Connecticut. It might be a little bit longer than the average airline commute, but it is a journey that I've taken several times over, and had gotten quite used to.
So when I arose bright and early on July 11, I thought that I had hadn't a single thing to fret about. The taxi came on time, my valubles were packed away, my apartment was sufficiently cleaned up, and I had my passport and flight information tightly in hand when I plodded into the small, familiar airport shortly after 6:00 in the morning. My own flight was a fairly early 8:00 AM departure to the capital city, so I waited patiently until check-in opened, and calmly got into line.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly swimmingly, that is until suddenly I heard the sounds of a major fuss in process near the front. I looked up, and at the nearly customer service desk, I saw a very peeved British expatriate making his voice heard. It took me a little bit to understand him through the rather colorful language that he was using, but soon a few rather unpleasant words began to stick out from the ruckus, namely the term "canceled."
A few seconds passed before the terrible realization struck me like a thunderbolt; his flight and the one I was planning on boarding....surely, they couldn't be the same one, could they? Granted, I hadn't seen my specific Air China flight posted anywhere in the last several minutes, but that's because I probably just wasn't looking hard enough...right? I was going to get to the front of the line, get my ticket, and then in sbout an hour minutes I would be well on my way to making my connecting flight in Beijing....right?
.......Right?
A bit shakily now, I stepped up to the counter, and handed over my itinerary. The young woman on the other side of the line took but one look at it and said to me in heavily accented English,
"I'm sorry, this flight has been canceled."
Anyone who has known me for more than a day probably knows at least one thing; I still am not the most adept person at handling abrupt and sudden stresses, and this moment was no different. It felt like someone had smacked me square in the gut with a shovel. At first I had absolutely no idea what to do, for the panic that was quickly swamping over me was like nothing else.
I may be able to teach medical English classes without so much as a minor in biology. I have spent no less than two different treks out in the mountains in northern New Mexico on a bear-infested Boy Scout ranch. Like other people, there are many things that I can boast of that not many others have done or experienced. However, heaven forbid that I deal with a flight cancelation without becoming an over-panicked wreck.
So at first there I stood, just stunned and numb whitl several expectedly annoyed travelers-to-be from the same flight bunched together up at the front, demanding answers and anything that could help them make their own connecting flights in Beijing. After a good fifteen minutes of absolute mystery, I finally managed to pick up what was going on, thanks mainly due to a kind-hearted Chinese-American couple from Los Angeles who did a fair amount of translating for the several severely peeved foreigners who just had their day turned upside-down. Due to bad weather, the plane that we were supposed to take never made it from Beijing in the very first place, and the next available flight that we could take wasn't going to be until 9:00 that night. In the meantime, Air China would be willing to take us to a hotel in nearby Changchun to wait out the day.
Left with little choice, I checked in my bags, and called Wang Wei back in Jilin City. Although she lacked the power to control the planes in the sky, she was at least able to contact the airlines for more information, and also to serve as a point of contact for me in what became a bit of a bizarre, but surprisingly effective phone chain. In order to keep my family in the loop about what was happening I had to call Wang Wei in Jilin City, who would then call Father Brian in Hong Kong, who would then in turn give my family a ring back in New England.
So once all available details were passed on, we were swept up in a small bus and taken into the nearby city, starting what turned out to be a long, stressful wait. From the get-go it was clear that I would be missing my connectiong flight to New York. Thankfully both legs of the trip were through Air China, but would I be able to successfully grab a seat back home? For roughly the next ten hours, none of this was really very clear as I found myself yet again back on the familiar battlefield, locked in combat with anxiety, worry, and their old ally, absolutely overblown fear.
By the time I did finally get a bit of clarity on anything, I wasn't quite a big fan of the answers that came my way. It was actually when my fellow delayed travelers and I had just boarded the bus to make our late-night Beijing flight that I recieved the message from Wang Wei informing me that not only did there seem to be no available seats whatsoever for my New York flight for the next day, but none for the very next day either.
Having done so much already, she could now do little more than implore me to be assertive once I landed in Beijing, and to do whatever I could to snag that precious seat back home to states. While she was only trying to help, it also simultaneously was a bit unnerving. After all, if someone needs to be lectured a little on how to stand up for himself, then it's probably more than fair to bet that man is probably far too much of a Mister Nice Guy for his own good.
Thus, as I finally boarded an overdue plane to the Beijing Capital Airport, my mind was flooded with a sea of concerns and schemes, both of which grew only more preposterously absurd with nearly every passing minute. Would I be stranded in Beijing for several days straight? Where would I go? What would I do? Should I just start thinking of old haunts to revist from my student days and accept my fate? What was the best way to handle the people at the transfers desk? Raise my voice, slam my fists repeatedly and create a living hell on earth until my demands were met? Break down in tears and blubber uncontrollably and make them hideously, hideously uncomfortable until they give me my way just so they wouldn't have to deal with a piteously weeping twenty-five year old anymore?
I fought with the massive horde of frantic and ridiculous thoughts from take-off to landing, through baggage claim. It was almost two in the morning by the time I approached the international transfers desk, where a very haggard-looking Air China employee had just been trading barbs with a man who sounded like fury incarnate. Once it was my own turn, I quietly explained my predicament and headed over my itinerary. Seonds later, I could feel my heart plummet as she explained quite brusquely in English,
"You see this flight? It's all full for tomorrow, I-"
"Are you sure?" I replied in a tone that I don't think many people would objectively brand as "very assertive" in any degree."Is there a first class seat? Can I pay more for one?"
Almost automatically I started to brace myself for the very worst. However, with barely a word, she suddenly switched her attention to her computer, and started to quickly search through all available flight information. Then, she grabbed a phone and made a quick call, inquiring rapidly in Mandarin. Again, it was back to the computer, clicking and typing away furiously. Again she reached for a phone, only for reasons completely unexplained was not only a different one, but from my point of view seemed to be tucked away in what I swore was a hidden compartment almost at floor level. She inquired again, then it was back to the computer.
Suddenly, from seemingly out of nowhere, a small, crudely-printed paper appeared in her fingers, which she promptly handed across the counter.
"All right, this is your ticket for tomorrow." She informed me.
My experience had hardly been the stuff of horror stories; rather, it had been nothing more than the exact same minor fiasco that literally thousands of travelers endure every single day. My own extra time on Mainland China didn't even rate very highly as an unpleasant delay, for my trip home had literally only been postponed by twenty-four hours. Other people have been stranded in various cities for days, even weeks. My own troubles were even more miniscule in light of the extensive research I had done for my senior thesis on Jesuit missionaries, who would literally have to travel for months, and sometimes even years to get to where I was. At best, my experience was a mild unconvenience that had come to a totally expected and conventional ending.
Yet were anyone else there to see the unnecessary degree to which my eyes misted up and my voiced cracked a little as I wearily but happily gave my thanks, then they probably would have thought that I had either won a million dollars, or had just been pardoned five minutes before being sent to the electric chair. Truly, there are few people who can fret and work themselves up into a fuss over certain things better than one Mr. G. Staysniak can.
Finally, with brand-new ticket in hand, but also a voucher for a nearby airport hotel for one free night, and a room the likes of which I did not expect in the slightest.
With two stories, a massive bed and Lord only knows how many luxuries, I do believe that it was the nicest room that I ever had the pure luck to spend the night in all my time both studying, working and living abroad. It also helped a bit that I was so exhausted that by the time my head hit my pillow, it felt like I had laid myself to rest upon a cloud.
I awoke the next morning, feeling refreshed and ready to face the day. However, that initial "let's do this" attitude proved to have a tragically short existence, before it was rapidly cut down in its prime by a fresh wave of brand new overworked fears.
After all, the "ticket" that I had received the night before wasn't exactly the bona-fide deal, but rather a hastily printed piece of paper that said there was a ticket waiting for me on that day's New York-bound China Airlines flight. While part of me wanted to actually obey common sense a bit and think nothing of it, an increasingly paranoid par tof my mind kept voicing its strong opinion that maybe nothing was set in stone just yet. Perhaps it really just meant that I could get a seat that day, just so long as someone canceled at the least moment. Or, even worse, maybe it was just a means for the badly stressed and tired airline worker to get me away and out of her hair, and I was just as hopelessly stranded as when I first arrived.
Not too surprisingly, anxiety quickly won the battle. It wasn't all too long before I had packed up, checked out, and was on the next hotel bus to the international terminal, where I found that I had in fact arrived so early, that no counter had been opened for my New York flight. With a flock of butterflies flapping like mad in my gut and helplessly at the total mercy of time yet again, I could do no more than sit down, take out one of my books and check the time every several minutes.When a few folks got in line early, I hastily jumped to my feet and took my spot, all the while praying fervently that I would experience nothing akin to a repeat of yesterday morning.
Finally, the airline staff took their place, and the moment of reckoning had come. Feeling like I was standing atop broken glass, I fidgeted ceaselessly, until the couple ahead of me successfully checked in. I took a deep breath, wheeled my bags forward, and handed forward my ticket voucher and passport in a slightly shakey hand.The seconds that ticked by seemed to last an eternity as the young man in a crisp whtie uniform silently looked at my documents, and typed down a few things. Meanwhile, I quitely stood by, half-submerged in an ocean of nerve-wracking uncertaintly, with a fast-beating heart that felt like it was trying to climb up my throat.
Suddenly, just like that it was over. A ticket suddenly printed out, and the fellow behind the desk asked me to hoist up my bags onto the conveyer belt. As I did as bid, the flood gates opened and the river of tension that had been bottled up inside of me came rushing out in an instant. It was official; I was finally allowed to head back home.
As I recognized earlier, these things just happen. In spite of that though, a part of me still wants to know that of all the times that the flight to or from abroad could have gone slightly awry, it had to be this one, just when I was rounding the corner with the finish line in plain sight.
I guess that fate and the powers that me just happen to have a bit of a sense of humor when it comes to these matters. Then again, maybe the delay and the grossly unnecessary amount of stress I threw myself through was all just a very well-orchestrated punishment for my crime of about a week earlier, when with the help of a friend I tracked down one of the many oddly-designed "no honking" signs one sees everywhere around my campus.
Once we settled on "the one", with Rachel manning my camera, we staged a quick but flippant demonstration of sorts.
If this act of smartassery was my undoing, then I apologize. In the meantime though, I must say that after everything, there is nothing like being back in the northeast.
Um, no, not the one I was just in, I meant the northeast that I originally came from, and-
Okay, much better.
Recent Comments