Yes, I’m going to complain. Feel free to roll your eyes and ignore me. I don’t care; venting is such sweet sorrow and it’s cathartic as well. I always feel SO much better after I let off some steam.
I don’t travel much these days. I never liked to travel; getting stuck on the road during 9/11 didn’t do anything to change that attitude and the emergence of the “Electronic Office” philosophy provided an excuse not to travel. That being the case I usually work very hard at staying home, unfortunately, sometimes you have no choice but to pack up and hit the road.
That was the situation last week; I had to schlep to Ft. Wayne Indiana of all places. If you haven’t been there, then take it from me, Ft. Wayne has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Even the corn is unfit for human consumption and is only used to feed hogs. It’s feed corn.
The game plan was Newark to Detroit and then Detroit to Ft. Wayne Thursday evening and then a reversal of the trip Friday. I hate the Detroit airport. It seems that you always land two miles from the mood tunnel that takes you to Concourse C. Concourse C is where you find the puddle jumper jets that they fly to Ft. Wayne. I call it the “mood tunnel” because of the light show and audio as you ride the moving sidewalks.
I spent two hours in Detroit going through three gate changes. The flight to Ft. Wayne is only an hour. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so I have no idea what the problem was. Overall it took some 7 ½ hours to get from New Jersey to Ft. Wayne. That meant no dinner as it was pushing 9:30 when I finally got to the hotel.
The Ft. Wayne airport was basically in shut down mode when I arrived. Luckily someone was still at the Avis booth. They gave me one of those Chevy HRRs. Was it something I said or did they have to stay overtime waiting for my flight to arrive and were ticked off? Saddling me with an HRR was a terrible thing to do. So much for Midwestern hospitality, not only is the thing ugly as sin but the slope of the roof troubled my ability to see the road properly. I really didn’t like the thing. The hotel was nice though. I stayed at a Marriot Courtyard which is always pleasant.
I did my thing and around 3 PM the next day headed back. I arrived at the Ft. Wayne airport only to be informed by Northwestern that my flight was canceled and they were booking me on Delta. The transfer was not smooth. It took a combination of Delta and Northwestern folks about forty minutes to work it out. Now I was going through Cincinnati.
The flight from Ft. Wayne to Cincinnati wasn’t the problem. It was the flight from Cincinnati to Newark. Let’s see, how do I put this? Basically I was booked by Northwestern on a Delta fight flown by a surrogate local airline pretending to be Continental. No wonder they were having a problem. I flew the same class of puddle jumper jet from Cincinnati to Newark as I flew from Ft. Wayne to Cincinnati.
The bottom line is I ended up sitting in Cincinnati for 2 ½ hours instead of Detroit. Cincinnati has a lot better vendors in the concourse and I managed to eat dinner on the way back. I bought a Quiznos turkey sandwich and munched on it by the gate. Overall it took me better than 9 hours to get home and I crawled into my house a little past midnight.
Air travel really sucks. It used to be merely annoying but now it has progressed beyond annoying into the realm of torturous. I'm definitely going to continue to focus on not traveling. Maybe I could write a book called "Not Traveling for Dummies."
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8 comments:
Sorry you didn't enjoy our town. I do beleive I would rather live in the Fort then Jersey any day though!
I'm a New Jersey boy, born & bred, married to a Fort Wayne girl. For the record my best driving time door to door from Bergen County is nine hours.
I live south of Fort Wayne now. The housing is cheap. But food wise it's rough. Forget real pizza, bagels, and good Chinese. I miss Taylor Ham very badly.
Been to New Jersey...Live in Fort Wayne....Still in Fort Wayne, by choice. Nuff said??
"Northwestern"? What airline is that? Shoots the hell out of the credibility of the rest of the story...
Who gives two craps who the NJ symphony orchestra conductor is. They are a joke after the whole Axelrod reaming.
NJ has a million redeeming qualities. beaches - try everything from sandy hook to cape may, mountains - Sussex County is gorgeous and more rural than most of rural indiana, dining, Bergen and Passiac Counties are world class. Want bayou type wetlands, go to the Delaware Bay. Want small town charm, hundreds of towns fit the bill. When David Letterman and his production company wanted small town Ohio, they filmed in Glen Rock and Riverdale, NJ, nor Ohio, the show was Ed.
The people are friendly, and warm. The climate is great. Anyone that bashes NJ has most likely never seen more than the I-95 NJ Turnpike area or Newark Airport.
To claim a conductor is the states only asset, you need a reality check, He's foreign, and overbearing. Want to talk NJ music, lets talks Springsteen, Sinatra, etc., not some nordic ass. Fort Wayne has a great conductor, he is an old school commie sympathizer who used to be the soviet state Tv conductor,
NJ gave America Woodrow Wilson, Tom Kean, and plenty of great leaders. The yuppie power duo didn't say where they are from, but they clearly know nothing of NJ. The Garden State. Why would it be called that? Perhaps because almost every domestic tomato, corn, brocoli, peach, cranberry, brussel sprout, squash, etc was bred at Rutgers. yes Hoosier farmers grow Jersey crops.
I came to this blog because I am an ex NJ guy living in Northeast Indiana. Both have redeeming qualities.
But try finding regional Italian food in Indiana. Or Bagels. or regional Chinese, or deli in ay non-subway form, or even a good German pork Store. How come Indiana is loaded to capacity with german and swiss decendants and no one makes local german food?
So take your geekish fascination with foreign composers and desperatly seek a life. Yours is a sham.
Agreed with you comments on Fort Wayne. I've been exiled here for a few years and will be leaving - for good - soon. Can't happen soon enough. There's something wierd in the water here - this place is screwed up.
Looks nice! Awesome content. Good job guys.
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That Anonymous guy really gets around! Stumbled upon this post and had to chuckle. How dare you dis Ft Payne, I mean Ft Wayne. I have been exiled here since last year (husband transferred with promotion, could not say no) and can not wait, would count the minutes if I knew exactly when...to get back home. (which is even funnier, because it is Kentucky!!) Great blog...will return.
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