Atlanta Day 2

Gday Folks, Monty here. Long time reader, first time blogger.

Before I get started on my virgin blog, I thought I would give you all a synopsis of my journey from Europe (where I was with the family) to the good ole US of A.

It started at the ungodly hour of 5am Rome time when I had to be out the door to meet the waiting taxi to take me to the airport. This was the morning after Christmas, and when I hopped in the taxi I had a thought that I might not actually make it to Da Vinci Airport. This was because the taxi driver was still not entirely sober, judging from the smell of ethanol that was protruding my nostrils.
But I made it to the airport in one piece and before I knew it I was off to Madrid.

Unfortunately the flight took longer than expected and I had to really hustle to make my connecting flight. Having spent the last 3 weeks sampling Europe’s finest cuisine and beverages, I was definitely not in peak physical condition. And from what the airport signs were telling me, had to cover a 35 min journey to the other side of the airport in about 15 mins. Thankfully I was able to get my arse into gear and made it to my gate. After some sweet talking to the gate agent, I was able to make it onto the plane as the last passenger.

9 hours later I landed in Chicago, and that’s when things started to get interesting. Although I was told in Rome when I checked in that I would only need to collect my bags in Atlanta, USA law stipulates that all bags had to be collected and put by US Customs. Eager not to step out of line in the US, I dutifully waited by my baggage claim terminal. After 10 mins I was resigned to the fact that my bag obviously wasn’t as quick as me in Madrid and hadn’t made it onto the connecting flight.

As I was walking out of baggage claim, I was informed that my flight to Atlanta was cancelled and that I had to be rebooked. So I went and booked myself on another flight at 7:30pm Chicago time. At this stage it was 4:30pm Chicago time so I had a bit of time to kill. This was accomplished by trying to get the ball rolling on finding my luggage. I went to the American Airline check in counter and after approximately a 1 and a half hour wait in the queue was finally talking to a representative. However this proved to be a false dawn as I was told that I could only start tracking it down when I was at my last location, aka Atlanta. No exceptions, don’t even think about it mister, how dare you even suggest that it could be done in Chicago, you must be retarded.

At this stage in my quickly declining day, I looked at the flight board and realised that my 7:30pm flight had been delayed to 9pm. No biggie. To try and give myself a pick-me-up I decided to attack the closest airport Macca’s (and, yes, there was more than one there). I ordered a large Big Mac meal, halfway through the bad boy I regretted my decision. I couldn’t finish the big guy and had to throw away half my chips.

At about 9pm we all lined up to get ready to hop aboard the plane……..only to be told that it was cancelled and that we all had to rebook, again.
Everyone rushed to the rebooking desk. I was about a quarter of the way up to the front and it took me a good 2 hours to get to the front of the line. I got some stand bys for the next day and went to sleep in fold out beds provided by the airport set up near gate K1.

In retro Batman voice…..(Meanwhile, in Atlanta)

The day began as almost all have done recently – late, hungover and with a thorough recount of the previous night’s events. We then decided to get out and see the sights of Atlanta. But first we had to bid farewell to Dana: dropping him at the safe-as-houses-looking Greyhound Bus Depot, saying our goodbyes and quietly praying that he would board his bus without getting mugged and arrive in Knoxville without being decapitated.

It was at this point that the day took a turn for the worse. The navigational / driving combination of tweedledum (Wonders) and Tweedleidiot (Carl) saw us drive aimlessly around Atlanta for about 2 hours, in which time we had lunch at the renowned but disappointing “Varsity” and Tweedledum bizarrely asked for directions at Hooters, despite there being an information centre across the road. We did eventually manage to find Atlantic Station where after some brazen work from Cleland we skipped the half hour long line and got a discount into the BodyWorks exhibition. Really interesting, but certainly not the best for the raging hangovers that we were sporting.

By this stage it was time to go and get Monty from the airport which we proceeded to do, allowing him to take over the storytelling from this point….
…. But Monty had too much fun over the following days to complete the rest of the blog so the rest of the story is going to have to wait until he gets around to writing it.

Watch this space