Caveat Lector

I’m home from Edinburgh, having arrived about dinnertime yesterday. I waded through some of the sleep backlog last night, but I think there’s more to go.

I’m enormously grateful to Robin Rice, Claire Knowles, Les Carr, and everyone else (lots of people!) who helped bring me to Edinburgh and show me such a lovely time while I was there. I hope I lived up to billing.

As I tend to do, I woke up much too early on departure day, killing time downstairs where the wireless works (someday I will remember to have an Ethernet cord with me always, but that day is not this, apparently) until it was time to check out and go. Edinburgh taxis are quick and efficient, especially early on a Sunday morning when hardly anyone is on the roads. (I love that about Edinburgh. Cities that are permanently on the go just sort of depress me, really.) My cabbie on the way into town last Wednesday was a fount of useful, if occasionally dour, information about the city; I didn’t catch him out in a single inaccuracy. (Especially about the new Scottish Parliament building. That thing is a travesty. If I were HRH the Queen, I’d kick up a fuss about such a Fortress of Uglitude sitting across from my very nice palace.)

At the airport, I joined a queue from the Continental desk all the way to the door. No way would they be able to process us all before the 9:20 scheduled departure. This turned out not to be a worry, because the flight was delayed an hour.

I thought I was all right. I thought I had a three-hour window between flights. When I finally reached the desk, I found out this was not so; my window was only two hours. With a one-hour delay, that left one hour only to get through passport control, customs, and another round of TSA Security Theatre. The operative words are “not a chance in hell.” And there wasn’t another flight to Madison until the next morning.

Travel zen came to the rescue. There are, after all, worse fates than a night at an airport hotel, even in Newark. I calmly gave up my original flight for lost and determined on seeing whether the Newark agents could get me to Milwaukee or Chicago, whence I could catch a bus home. Worst case would be that airport hotel.

I am going to try to avoid flying Continental internationally in future, because they don’t make any particular effort to cater to vegetarians. Enough said about that (except that this was my mistake and not my hosts’; I chose the flights). I arrived in Newark hungry and tired, kicking travel zen into a new gear to cope with passport control (quite efficient, actually) and customs (argh). Landed at the bag-recheck area and told the guy that I’d probably missed my flight. He yelled for a check on the flight number, and—travel zen wins! My flight to Madison was delayed an hour. I could still make it!

So I rechecked my bag and checked the monitors for the flight gate. The said flight didn’t appear on the monitors. Yay. So after a Keystone-Kops montage of TSA Security Theatre as well as terminal and gate changes involving trams, buses, and a whole lotta walking, I found myself in a crowded and noisy Terminal A waiting for my flight, which had been delayed another half-hour while I wasn’t looking.

No worries. None. I would get home. That day. Anything else was gravy.

Well, having them lose my checked bag in Newark isn’t exactly, um, gravy. But I was the happiest person in line at Madison to put in my lost-bag claim, I’ll tell you that much!

The bag hasn’t turned up yet. I have a feeling it’s been sent to the wilds of northwest Arkansas or something. But half the people on my flight were in the same case, so I expect it’ll be found.