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- Wed, 05:21: Goodbye Lisbon. It's been too short a time to walk up all your hills. Next stop, Philadelphia.
- Wed, 06:02: RT @Museum_Facts: #OnThisDay in 1792 King Louis XVI was taken into custody by mobs during the French Revolution.He was later executed https…
- Wed, 06:06: RT @MPRnews: Omar makes history; 4 legislative incumbents bounced: https://t.co/rt3QCp5R8C https://t.co/WA7M34bTlX
- Wed, 14:00: Back in the, back in the, back in the USA https://t.co/BNGe3RrWcO
- Wed, 16:15: I guess I didn't need that toenail anyway.
- Wed, 16:16: Back to the land where TSA yells at you and tipping is the order of the day.
- Wed, 17:17: Do, we're supposed to leave Philly in fifteen minutes, but the plane ain't here yet... And, it's 6:17...
- Wed, 17:19: Ittsa plane!
- Wed, 17:27: RT @zesty_liberal: #RickScott fight against Zika hampered by Rick Scotts budget cutting https://t.co/YhfSrmlCQ6 https://t.co/0x93nCsKv4
- Wed, 17:39: Onward and West
Aug. 11th, 2016
Yesterday I awoke quite early to election news in Minneapolis, around 4 am local time in Lisbon. My plane back to Philly had already been pronounced an hour late by then, and I dozed a bit until seven or eight. I packed up the suitcase, showered, and headed down the hill to either: eat and/or take a taxi or take the Metro. I ended up taking the taxi to the airport, which as the day wore on, was probably a wise decision. (The wonderful host of the apartment I was staying in offered to help me down the hill with my suitcase, but I figured with gravity, I should be able to get there.) At the airport, I checked the bag, went through security, which dumps you in a duty-free store, where I acquired two bottles of port and two bars of chocolate.
When I'd checked my seat earlier, it had shown me in a middle seat, and I panicked and paid some money to get a window seat. Shortly after sitting down, I was asked if I would change so a mother could sit with her child, which I did after grumping about the money/seat issue. "Same seat, other side of the plane" somebody said, and so I switched. The plane was not a traveler's delight. Single row of monitors down the center of the plane for movies/entertainment. No USB ports, and old, kinda flaky microphone jacks. The first movie up was the recent Susan Sarandon one, where she's the over-controlling mother. It was quite good for captive entertainment. Second movie up was Juno, which is about when I stopped paying attention to the playlist. Eight hours or so later, we landed in Philly. Now, we'd left Lisbon an hour late, and lottsa people were on tight transfer times. The second the plane touched the runway, about half bolted to retrieve carry ons. The stewardesses wuz not impressed, and went around getting everybody to sit down. After we got to the gate, deplaning was about what you'd imagine, although no children were trampled. I had a fair amount of time until I left, so I waited for the panic to subside. Besides, with a checked bag, there ain't no great advantage to beating it to the carousel.
The automated passport machines were only slightly confusing, but much simpler than the customs forms the airlines still handed out, which either were or were not still used according to two of the TSA people on the way to customs. The passport machine has you answer a few questions, scans your passport, takes your picture (adjusting its height automagically), and spits out a form which may or may not be the only approved form to take to customs these days.
Before you can go through customs, however, you gotta get your checked baggage. Of course this involved waiting for quite some time, which is why seasoned travelers don't check baggage. Once I got my bag, I had to load it down with the two bottles of port and the two candy bars, trundle past customs, where the TSA was industriously yelling at the mass of people to form one line, and to go to the back of the line, which was quite impossible to see amongst the carousels. Being it was America, she was yelling in English at a plane load of people from Portugal. She also was not accomplishing much, but it seems to be in the nature of American security theater to make noise and boss people around.
The security people in the Lisbon airport talked with you when you were in line to check baggage. They put a tag on the back of your passport. They managed the lines much actively and with much less fuss and no shouting. They also didn't make me take off my flip-flops to walk through the metal detector.
Once past customs, I rechecked the bag with the two additional bottles o' port, went through security's long line, and headed off to find the gate. Once I'd found that, I wanted to kill some time by eating. I wandered around but the airport was not exactly foodie heaven. The only local place I found, at the other end of the A terminal, was full, so I went back to the other end of the A terminal where my gate and an Irish pub was, where I found a table. (I also slipped coming off the walkway and dinged a toenail quite well, which was amazing considering I've been wandering around Lisbon's cobblestones which can be slick as hell for the previous five days.) The waiter at the Irish pub actually seemed like he liked the job and he was good at it. After eating a Philly cheese steak and drinking my first Guinness in quite some time, I headed back to the gate where the plane was again delayed. Then they waited to add more fuel (I blame it on those two bottles o' port.), and then off we went westward.
Somewhere while we were around Chicago, MSP decided to close down due to a storm. So, we diverted to ORD, to sit and wait for a gate to refuel the plane and wait for MSP to reopen. At first they wanted everyone to wait on the plane, but that changed when they came up with a two hour estimate. Most of us clambered off the plane, to a very quiet corner of ORD. I found a Hudson News store that was open, and some people found more going the other way, but it was a hike. It must have been around twelve that we reboarded the plane and took off for MSP, where we touched down at 1:02 am. The gate we got off at was filled with sleeping people, and a woman was passing out pads to sleep on.
My bag was at the carousel by the time I got there, and it was dripping neither port from Lisbon nor pear from a quite small village in France.
Someone picked me up at the airport, and I stayed up fooling around with not much of anything until four or so in the morning.
When I'd checked my seat earlier, it had shown me in a middle seat, and I panicked and paid some money to get a window seat. Shortly after sitting down, I was asked if I would change so a mother could sit with her child, which I did after grumping about the money/seat issue. "Same seat, other side of the plane" somebody said, and so I switched. The plane was not a traveler's delight. Single row of monitors down the center of the plane for movies/entertainment. No USB ports, and old, kinda flaky microphone jacks. The first movie up was the recent Susan Sarandon one, where she's the over-controlling mother. It was quite good for captive entertainment. Second movie up was Juno, which is about when I stopped paying attention to the playlist. Eight hours or so later, we landed in Philly. Now, we'd left Lisbon an hour late, and lottsa people were on tight transfer times. The second the plane touched the runway, about half bolted to retrieve carry ons. The stewardesses wuz not impressed, and went around getting everybody to sit down. After we got to the gate, deplaning was about what you'd imagine, although no children were trampled. I had a fair amount of time until I left, so I waited for the panic to subside. Besides, with a checked bag, there ain't no great advantage to beating it to the carousel.
The automated passport machines were only slightly confusing, but much simpler than the customs forms the airlines still handed out, which either were or were not still used according to two of the TSA people on the way to customs. The passport machine has you answer a few questions, scans your passport, takes your picture (adjusting its height automagically), and spits out a form which may or may not be the only approved form to take to customs these days.
Before you can go through customs, however, you gotta get your checked baggage. Of course this involved waiting for quite some time, which is why seasoned travelers don't check baggage. Once I got my bag, I had to load it down with the two bottles of port and the two candy bars, trundle past customs, where the TSA was industriously yelling at the mass of people to form one line, and to go to the back of the line, which was quite impossible to see amongst the carousels. Being it was America, she was yelling in English at a plane load of people from Portugal. She also was not accomplishing much, but it seems to be in the nature of American security theater to make noise and boss people around.
The security people in the Lisbon airport talked with you when you were in line to check baggage. They put a tag on the back of your passport. They managed the lines much actively and with much less fuss and no shouting. They also didn't make me take off my flip-flops to walk through the metal detector.
Once past customs, I rechecked the bag with the two additional bottles o' port, went through security's long line, and headed off to find the gate. Once I'd found that, I wanted to kill some time by eating. I wandered around but the airport was not exactly foodie heaven. The only local place I found, at the other end of the A terminal, was full, so I went back to the other end of the A terminal where my gate and an Irish pub was, where I found a table. (I also slipped coming off the walkway and dinged a toenail quite well, which was amazing considering I've been wandering around Lisbon's cobblestones which can be slick as hell for the previous five days.) The waiter at the Irish pub actually seemed like he liked the job and he was good at it. After eating a Philly cheese steak and drinking my first Guinness in quite some time, I headed back to the gate where the plane was again delayed. Then they waited to add more fuel (I blame it on those two bottles o' port.), and then off we went westward.
Somewhere while we were around Chicago, MSP decided to close down due to a storm. So, we diverted to ORD, to sit and wait for a gate to refuel the plane and wait for MSP to reopen. At first they wanted everyone to wait on the plane, but that changed when they came up with a two hour estimate. Most of us clambered off the plane, to a very quiet corner of ORD. I found a Hudson News store that was open, and some people found more going the other way, but it was a hike. It must have been around twelve that we reboarded the plane and took off for MSP, where we touched down at 1:02 am. The gate we got off at was filled with sleeping people, and a woman was passing out pads to sleep on.
My bag was at the carousel by the time I got there, and it was dripping neither port from Lisbon nor pear from a quite small village in France.
Someone picked me up at the airport, and I stayed up fooling around with not much of anything until four or so in the morning.