The Road Home from Detroit

[canyonwalker]

The road home from Detroit Friday afternoon/evening felt long. And it was... though it could have been worse. Here's a rundown of the good & the bad:

• I left the show just before 4pm, after raffling off the PlayStation 5. Another colleague left at the same time as we both had Friday evening flights to catch.


• We called a car with Lyft. It took for-freakin'-ever to arrive. Like, "Driver arriving in 5 minutes"... then 10 minutes later, "Driver arriving in 6 minutes." At least we included the likelihood of crap like that happening in planning our schedules, so we still got to the airport with time to spare.


• Security at the airport was slow. There were only 10 people in front of me in line. It was still slow. All across my trip this week I've observed that plenty of people in Detroit don't care about working fast. The job is the job, and nobody working there cares that there's a line or customers are getting frustrated because staff are lackadaisical and inefficient.


• As I was deciding whether to grab some dinner at Detroit or try to do it between flights at Chicago I spied a Lufthansa lounge. Oddly there's no United Airlines lounge but there is one for Lufthansa. And on the signboard outside it noted that Star Alliance Gold members are welcome. I have *A Gold, from United— which doesn't allow me in its own lounges for having that status. But this partner airline I've flown, like 1/100th as much, does!
  
  
  
  
• The spread in the Lufthansa lounge wasn't stellar, but it was certainly better than nothing. I enjoyed two small sandwiches and two glasses of wine. It wouldn't be enough to fill me up for the evening but it was a great start.


• The flight from DTW to ORD got delayed, for no discernable reason. We arrived 20 minutes late. Irrespective of that I did get about 45 minutes of sleep on the flight because I was so tired. But those 20 minutes lost sitting on the ground in Detroit meant that I had to run to catch my connection two concourses away at ORD.
  
  


• I didn't have time to grab more food at ORD. Or rather, I thought I didn't have time to buy food. United was showing the connecting flight departing on time. It actually left 20 minutes late. The reason for the delay? The people loading food were running late! 🤣
  
  
• United has a new buy-on-board food option since the last time I flew them: a cheeseburger! For $10 it's kind of crummy compared to food choices on the ground (and outside of an airport, arena, or convention hall) but compared to other eats available at 38,000' altitude it was pretty reasonable. It's at least better than the free food still served in coach on international flights.


• I got no sleep on the 4-hour-plus flight from ORD-SFO but I did watch a Liam Neeson action movie, Memory. As this is the 2020s I watched it via aircraft wifi on my own phone, instead of on a seat-back screen or— remember this from TwenCen?— a shared projection screen at the front of the cabin.


• Despite leaving 20 minutes late we landed a few minutes early at SFO. No, the pilots didn't "make up the time in the air" like they often say. Pilots actually have almost zero ability to fly faster. The simple reason we arrived ahead of schedule is that the schedules are planned assuming that 20-30 minutes of delays (way more on certain routes!) will occur.


• At SFO I called a Lyft ride as soon as I entered the terminal. This Lyft driver actually arrived on schedule. He waited for me at the pickup point before I could get there myself. It was great having someone waiting to provide me service for once this week, instead of me always waiting around for workers to get to me.


• With the flight arriving on time and the car ready when I wanted it, I got home— as in, walking through my door— just before 11:15pm. I was worried it would take until almost midnight. I was happy again for something working right.


• I showered, unpacked my suitcase, and got to bed, all before midnight. Hooray!