Croatia

[OnyxCougar]

I tried to pull myself together to think. Kelle went outside to smoke and I did the only thing a girl who is stranded in a big old nasty airport 3500 miles from home: I called my daddy.

I started out cool. "Hi Daddy."
"Hi! What's up?"
"Well, you know we went to Europe, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we got to JFK airport, and found out National went bankrupt."
"Yeah, I heard about that."
This is where my voice started going up in octaves. "Well we're at JFK and there are no flights out to Las Vegas and everything is standby and you can'tevenbuyyourwayoutofthis airport...." I was crying and slurring everything together.

Daddy has never liked trying to talk to me when I'm crying. "OK, calm down, I can't understand you. You're at JFK?"
[sniff, snuffle] "Yeah."
"And you were ticketed home to Vegas on National?"
"Yeah."
"And now National is out of business. Have you checked with the other airlines?"
"Yes. We can't find anything out of New York. We might be able to get standbys to Minneapolis or Detroit on Northwest, or Atlanta, Dallas or Salt Lake on Delta, but after that it's anyone's guess as to what is going to be available to Vegas, and that will be standby too."
"Well, let's get you as far west as possible. See what you can get to Salt Lake and then call me back."
"Ok Daddy."

Kelle came in from smoking her cigarette and I told her Daddy said to get to Salt Lake. So we went back upstairs to the Delta counter, and the last plane of the night to SLC was no longer taking standby requests. The last Atlanta flight wasn't taking requests. The last Dallas flight was full up too. There was now NOTHING we could do. We were stuck in New York for the night.

"Daddy?"
"What did you find out?"
"All the planes are fullandnowwe'restuckinNewYork.."
[sigh]"Ok, calm down. What did delta say?"
"All the planes leaving the airport, on all the airlines, are full. No standby available."
"Ok, when is the first flight to Salt Lake?"
"8am tomorrow morning, and that's on a standby basis."
"ok, what time is it there?"
"It's 10pm."
"Ok, you have 2 choices: take a taxi and get a hotel room for the night, or sleep in the airport. You have any money?"
"We have a little, but we'll need it for the standby tickets. $25 each for each leg of the trip."
"Looks like you'll be staying in the airport then. Go to the Delta counter and ask when and where you can sign up for the Salt Lake standby. See if you can get a standby confirmation, and then you can go behind security, and sleep back there, where it's safer. The best thing about New York is being FROM there."
"Ok, Daddy."
"OK?"
"Ok."
"Alright, call me in the morning if you do NOT get the standby to Salt Lake, or call me from Salt Lake if you get there."
"OK."

So I called Delta. I got a "Standby Confirmation Number", which means I'm on the list to be on the list for standby. [sigh] We checked with security, and since we didn't actually have a ticket or "standby ticket", we couldn't go behind the checkpoint. And better news: Delta has it's own terminal. Terminal Three. So back on the bus with all our shit at 10:30 at night in New York. And we were at terminal four. All the way around the friggin airport. Again. I tell you, we were so tired of this damn airport we could just ..something. Damn tired.

So we got to Terminal three, but it was so late that most of it was closed. The only part of it that was open was a side door, and there was one lady at the counter, who confirmed my SCN (Standby Confirmation Number), and said we could sleep over there (pointing to a set of chairs in the corner). I asked her the earliest time we could actually get the standby tickets, and she said 6:30am. So we took out little luggage cart and parked it next to the chairs. Kelle got her blanket out and laid it on the floor, threw her pillow on top of it and then borrowed my blanket to cover herself with. She kind of slid her short self underneath the seats I was sitting on and fell asleep. I sat on the outside chair and stretched my arm over our bags, then laid my head on my arm as a pillow. I might have gotten 2 hours sleep total, but every time one of the cleaning ladies walked past the automatic doors, I'd wake up as the icy outside air blew over us. I hate New York.