duck-shaped pain

• Walked up to Washington Square in North Beach, watched pigeons fight and eat and peck at things. [1] I was astonished that the grass was so green -- after a such a harsh winter, I just wanted to reach out and touch the greenness, roll in it, perhaps kiss it, but then I would have been attacked by a pigeon.

• Went to the Cartoon Art Museum, which was fun. After than, I went to SFMOMA and revisted my favorite painting in the whole world. Which is a secret, because I feel all weird writing about it. But I sat and looked at it for a very long time, and felt overwhelmed like last year.

• Hung out with my ex for a few hours, which was nice. A lot of coffee drinking, a lot of walking.

• Was astonished by the sheer number of artichokes at the farmer's market. They were so cheap! I was envious. Not like buying a 'choke would have done me any good at that moment, since I was bereft of homemade mayonnaise just then.

• Bought some stuff, of course.

  • This shirt (in red), and this black skirt (but in cotton)

  • Some books: The Scarlet Professor by Barry Werth, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, and Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco

  • Some used CDs: Vs. by Mission of Burma, and GP/Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons

After all that I did, the thing that I remember most is what happened when I was trying to get home.

My flight from SF to Denver was uneventful. Going through security was kind of a mess, since there seemed to be no real organization behind it. [2] People were shuttled from line to line, and a lot of people didn't know if they were standing in line for security or to check in. I got extra scrutiny as usual, thanks to the hardware in my leg.

I got on the plane, and the flight went fine. I was sandwiched between a seat-kicker in back and a recliner in front. Sheer joy.

We landed in Denver, and this is where the story really begins. I expected there to be delays. There always are when I fly through Denver in March. Early-spring snowstorms are much more virulent than those in months one associates more with snow, and there is also the fun of ice. I have always been delayed, whether at this airport or at the old one (although the delays I experience at the old shitbox airport were along the line of ten or more hours, instead of one or two these days). The problems never lie with jet flights to real places, though. It�s the commuter flights on tiny planes that suffer the most, and the Denver to here leg is where I run into trouble.

By the time I got off my plane, my flight home had already been delayed two hours. As I said, this was completely expected. I got some food, bought some more reading material, and sat down to wait.

I called my mom to say hi, and while we were talking, an announcement came over the intercom about my flight. I stopped talking to listen, and it said that my flight had been seriously overbooked, and that they needed volunteers to give up their seats, in exchange for a free ticket and other perks.

I didn't need to be back home until late the next afternoon, and hey, free ticket, so I went up and volunteered. The counter agent was thankful, and gave me all the prerequisite vouchers and meal tickets and whatnot, and called to get my bags.

I was excited. Free hotel room after four nights in a hostel bed sounded good to me. At this point, had I gotten on my flight, I wouldn't have been home until the wee hours of the morning, anyway. This way, I figured, I'd get a decent amount of sleep and fly home tomorrow reasonably rested.

I have no complaints about what happened to me that night. All the United people were pleasant, the people at the hotel were nice, and everything happened as it should. The plane the next day took when it was supposed to, and we got back in time, and it was overall a fine experience. What I didn't like, and what sticks out in my mind, were these two women. They also gave up their tickets voluntarily, and got the same deal I did, and proceeded to do nothing but bitch and moan and complain about it until we got home. I couldn't get away from them; the fact that we were in the same situation made us instant buddies, I guess, and they continually sought me out.

Anyway, I caught the shuttle bus to the designated hotel. The weather had caused all sorts of other delays and cancellations, so I had plenty of company. We arrived at the hotel, which was out by the old airport, where there was already a sizeable group of people waiting in line to check in. Things seemed to be going fairly smoothly, despite the crowd. The desk clerks at the front were checking in people quickly and the wait wasn't long at all. I mention this because some guy got out of his spot in line, came up to the front, and started yelling and carrying on about how sick he was of waiting and how they should be doing more to help him stop waiting. I had only been there for about ten minutes at this point, and was nearly to the head of the line. This guy was quite a bit behind me, so he had just arrived. I don't know what he'd been through that day, but nothing really warrants abusing the hotel staff.

When it was my turn to check in, I was extra pleasant to the desk clerk. She said that the various airlines had sent or were sending over nearly 200 displaced people that night, and hadn't given the hotel any real warning about it. Since it was Sunday evening, they were expecting quiet, which is not the word I would use to describe the lobby at that point.

My room was great, especially considering that it was free. It was a very large room. It came with a big bathrobe that was accompanied by some sort of bathrobe-warming device. There was a whirlpool tub. I felt as if I had stumbled into a wonderland populated only by firm mattresses, individually wrapped soaps and complimentary pens and notepads: quite a change from four nights in a hostel, complete with an always-changing cast of roommates.

I jumped on the beds.

The meal allowance the airline gave me was generous ($25), and I ordered a mushroom, red pepper, spinach and feta cheese on foccacia sandwich, which was pretty good. It came with unannounced avocadoes, though, one of which I dropped on the floor out of surprise. It left a wee green skid on the rug - blech.

After dinner, I took a long bath in the extravagant bubbling tub. It was great. I was very glad I gave up my seat.

I woke up early the next morning to catch the shuttle bus back to the airport. Just my luck -- the two complaining women got on the same bus, and they didn't shut up until we landed at home, several hours later.

I really tried hard to ignore them. One of them was complaining about the room. That she had wanted only one bed, but got two. "It was the right size bed, but that other one bothered me." The other woman was upset because there weren't enough free things for her to steal. "They only had one bottle of shampoo. You'd think for a free room, there would be more shampoo."

In case you missed it earlier, I reiterate me point: these women, like me, gave up their seat voluntarily. They got free things. Therefore, they give up their right to complain about there not being enough free things. Had they been delayed or had their flights cancelled like so many of our fellow travelers, some bitching might have been in order. But they placed themselves in this situation voluntarily, which means that it would be great if they had just shut up and enjoyed it.

We got to the airport. I checked in at the counter, since I had a bag, then went through security, as usual. I bought some breakfast with my free breakfast voucher. It was sizeable enough to cover the most expensive menu item at the airport restaurant, the bagels and lox platter. Tasty. When I went to pay, the woman at the counter handed me a banana and a muffin, since I still had money left on my voucher after I paid for my meal. Free lunch, hey.

I walked down to the gate, and there were the complaining women, miserably bonding over cold, disappointing Egg McMuffins. I know, because they told me so. "Oh, what an awful breakfast we have. There isn't any good food here, [3] and we had all this money on our vouchers, and look what we spent it on." I told them that I had just partaken of salmon and decent coffee, and they didn't believe me.

Then I got to hear their tales of woe about security. Neither of them had boarding passes or any real proof that they were supposed to be on a plane, so the security people turned them away. So they had to go all the way to the counter where they had to stand in line for five minutes, can you believe it. Oh, and they both had tons of luggage, so they had check some of it, ohmigod.

(I may seem sort of harsh on these two, but the thing that I hate the most about flying is listening to people complain about flying. It brings unprecedented levels of whininess in a lot of people, unfortunately, and I hate listening to it, since no one's airline story is ever unique, but they all seem to think so. I realize that none of my stories are unique, yet I persist on writing them anyway. But I'm not the one who will drone your ear off about tiny mistreatments while we're waiting to board our flight. Such complaints are properly left to recount to your buddies at home, over several rounds of drinks.)

Anyway, they went on and on and on about how horrible things were. The seats were hard. The magazine one of them brought was too long. Finally, we boarded. The plane took off on time, and in the end, it landed on time. Yet the two of them (it's a little plane, and we could all hear them) kept talking about Their Ordeal. How they had been treated so awfully. One of them kept uttering, "Help! United is holding us prisoners!" And the coffee didn't have enough sugar in it, which was a topic of conversation for a long time.

I had been really in a good mood up to that point. I had been on a good vacation, and got a free night in a nice hotel room, and now I was going to be at home where I could sit around in my pajamas for a while. But listening to these women kept bringing me down, and by the time we landed, I was grouchy. They were just so negative, as if there was some sort of black hole in their row, sucking us all in.

But then I got home and got in my pajamas and said hi to the dog, and then I felt okay.

[1] Believe it or not, there are almost no pigeons where I live. I have no idea why. We have magpies instead, and I think pigeons are definitely the better deal. Magpies like to steal dog food, and I think pigeons actively avoid it.

[2] Not that Denver has the A-number one best airport in the entire country, but their security is much better organized than that at SFO. The way that the lines at SFO were set up is that it was done by airline (this arrangement might just have been for lucky United passengers, I don't know). There was one line for first class and other special folk and then another line for us proles. Both lines were glacial in pace. The way security is set up at DIA is that there are also two lines. One is the express lane, for people who have either no carry-on baggage or just one bag. The other, slower, line is for everyone else. This way, people are rewarded for doing something that actually helps speed up the security process. Also, their signs were much clearer and there were official people who seemed to know what was going on.

[3] Not that my breakfast was stellar, but it did include capers, which places it light-years beyond any fast-food breakfast.

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