1. Phoenix calls their airport a Sky Harbor because apparently airport just isn't fancy schmancy enough for a city as fancy schmancy as Phoenix . It makes me think of giant buoys. Anchors away!
2. The Phoenix Sky Harbor is the fifth largest airport in the world, according to the driver of the little tram that took me down the mile-and-a-half-long (!) corridor that took me to my departure gate. If I had walked it would have taken for-ev-er.
3. I didn't go outside the sky harbor, but I'm pretty sure the high in Phoenix today was 5000 degrees. Going through the jetway was like walking from a mini cooler to the freezer via the oven.
4. The Heathrow clusterfuck is one of the few airports on the planet that is larger than the Phoenix Sky Harbor. Heathrow is the most jacked-up, whack-ass airport I've been too. Bigger than Phoenix doesn't mean better than Phoenix, it just means more sprawling. It's four terminals spread out over a bazillion acres, and you have to take busses in between. Crowded busses, which you wait for in a crowded line.
5. It didn't help matters when the British Airways flight took off late. Was it an hour late? I wasn't even paying attention, but I missed my Hamburg connection by at least an hour. The plane landed late, and then we had to wait for a place for the plane to park. Then I had to take a bus to the terminal to wait in line to catch another bus to another terminal so I could wait in long-ass security line, and then wait in a long-ass line at the BA counter while the BA people tried to figure out which way was up so they could send us and our sour-puss faces on our way. But the guy who got me the flight I'm currently waiting for was friendly and efficient, so I guess it's okay.
6. Anyways, I'm sitting in the Heathrow clusterfuck waiting for the screens to list my flight so I can wait at my departure gate. This is another stupid thing - they don't tell you what gate your flight is departing from until 40 minutes before the departure time. But this clusterfuck is so clustered and fucked, that I'm afraid it won't be enough time.
7. Bollocks!
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So that was yesterday; I tried to upload it but the network at Heathrow wouldn't let me. If it had, I would have written more about how my Hamburg connection, the one they booked for me after I missed the first one, left four hours late. Gawd it was frustrating sitting there, in the terminal, staring at the screen that refused to tell me the departure time. I kept wondering why it was so crowded in the terminal, but then I realized that all the flights listed except for one (there were probably twenty on the list) were cancelled or delayed. Something about thunderclouds. Mother nature is annoying.
When I finally arrived in Hamburg, got into my apartment, and put my stuff down, my computer, which was still on California time said 3:29pm. I had left California at 3:40pm on Saturday, which makes just about 24 hours of travel fun. Awesome.
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