Chicago O'Hare: Things go badly wrong...

Boston airport is rubbish. Really rubbish. There's no coffee shop where you can sit down and enjoy an English breakfast tea and something to eat. Everything is takeaway on the coffee shop front and customers are expected to take their order away and sit somewhere else, in a communal area. I hate that. I had a decidedly average lunch in a place called Lucca where there was no dessert offering or hot beverage menu. Imagine that! You can't order a green tea or a coffee or whatever because there's nothing on the menu. Don't get me wrong: I didn't want a dessert. I'm trying to stop them completely, erase them from my life so I suppose there not being a dessert selection is good. But in all honesty I could have done with sitting there for a bit longer after eating my decidedly average chicken burger and fries. But yeah, as a result, Boston airport is being branded as rubbish by yours truly. And yes, I hate it. That said, I hate everything right now and I'm taking it out on Boston airport and, actually, Boston itself. I thought it was supposed to be some kind of place you have to visit. New England and all that. Boston, Maine. I started thinking about Stephen King for heaven's sake. He lives in the state of Maine, doesn't he? I'm sure he does, but anyway, this ain't about Stephen King, it's about me and my predicament, which we'll come to shortly. For now, let's keep knocking Boston airport (air side). What about the WiFi? What about it? It's shite! So shite that I have resorted to writing my bile in a notepad and I'll have to copy it in to the lap top later on.

This is just a minuscule part of the queue, believe me...

My hotel was shite too AND it had bed bugs! Yes, I saw one when I jumped out of bed, which means there must be more of them. I was staying in room 308 of the Embassy Suites right by the airport. Alright, it was a case of 'any port in a storm' but hey, bed bugs! Who needs them? And to think I slept with the bastard.

Sixth floor, Aloft Hotel, Columbus

I shouldn't be in Boston. I should be in Columbus, Ohio, but it wasn't to be, thanks to Chicago O'Hare's immigration system or people or whatever. The flight over from London was fine (see previous post) but when we got off the plane and headed for the bit where they used to ask if you were a member of the communist party we found a huge queue. And I don't just mean a huge queue, I mean a fucking huge queue, longer than I have ever seen in my life. It was huge, it was monstrous, it was enormous. If you think you know what a big queue is all about, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the queue I was forced to join was the biggest ever, no challengers. It was so big that I was standing in it for more than three hours. THREE HOURS! In the process I missed my connecting flight to Columbus and, as a result, a whole new world of shit opened up to me.

The first problem was finding another flight to Columbus – there wasn't any. Or rather there was, but it involved flying to Charlotte and then flying again to Columbus and I wasn't keen on doing that. All I wanted to do was find a hotel for the night and then start again in the morning, but against my better judgement (and remember, my judgement ain't that good after flying eight hours across the Atlantic and every minute wishing it would all end and I could be where I was supposed to be, ie in Columbus).

The boredom of Boston airport and, indeed, all airports...

We were directed to the American Airlines information desk 'opposite K8' and soon realised that flights to Columbus are pretty damn rare and that the Charlotte option was all that was open to us (not that I was prepared to believe that, there had to be another way was my thinking).

Lucca – nothing to write home about...

There were problems. A storm was brewing and, as I sat there on the plane looking out at the thunder, lightning and rain I realised that I didn't want to put myself through an ordeal of extreme turbulence, not after an eight-hour flight from London. I was tired and now I was fed up too and I knew that I simply couldn't face the flight to Charlotte. I had to find another way and so I left the flight which would, I discovered, be sitting on the tarmac for over two hours. Meanwhile, however, I was queuing opposite K8, something I really didn't want to do again, at the American Airlines desk trying to find an alternative to the Charlotte flight I'd just kissed goodbye, not that it was going anywhere. There was an alternative that involved changing airline to United and flying to Boston and then finding a hotel in the city. I really didn't want to do it, I was in a mess and I just wanted to sleep until I felt better, but I couldn't. The United flight departed at 2145hrs with me on it, and I can't remember what time it got in but it was late and then, as I waited at reclaim for my bags, the machine ground to a halt and it was clear that my bags were still at Chicago O'Hare. Thanks to the baggage reclaim guy (although he was wrong) I was told my bags were most likely at Columbus, but I knew that bags didn't fly without their owners, they're a bit like dogs (who sometimes get lost). I hoped and prayed that they would be in Columbus but something told me they weren't going to be there.

I waited at B6 for a long time...

So I needed a hotel for the night and it turned out that many people were in the same position because of the storm. A man from Costa Rica was waiting for an Embassy Suites shuttle bus so I joined him and jumped on, checked in to room 308 and finally got to sleep around 0245hrs. I managed around two hours' sleep and then woke up in a frazzled state of mind. There was no way that I could simply nod off so I got up, showered and eventually went downstairs for breakfast. That was when I discovered a bug in the bed. Whether it was a so-called bed bug, I don't know, but it was definitely a bug of some sort, which really put me off, I can tell you. I told the girl on the front desk and the driver of the shuttle to the airport. I wonder if they'll do anything about it?

Around 1000hrs I took the train from Airport to State, got out and wandered around. Every shop sold tacky souvenirs: fridge magnets, shirts with 'Boston' emblazoned on the front and other cheap ephemera everybody could do without. I couldn't resist a fridge magnet... and a teeshirt with 'Boston' written on it.

I didn't see much of Boston to be fair, but the bits I did see were not very impressive, it all looked a bit like Peterborough on a dull day. I walked along State Street and then wandered through a couple of covered markets, one selling different types of food, the other selling souvenir tat of all shapes and sizes.

Bored and fed up I walked back to State railway station, took a train to Airport and then strolled through a park to the hotel where I messed around on my lap top before heading to the airport far too early and then found myself bored shitless. I was there for a long, long time waiting for a flight to Columbus. Initially I figured that with my flight at 1710hrs I'd be in Columbus around 2000hrs, but while the time counted down and down until I was expecting the flight to simply arrive at the gate and we all board, it kept getting put back. Suddenly, from saying, say, 23 minutes until boarding it was saying 41 minutes to boarding and on and on it went. I feared it would be cancelled. There was little to do but wander around looking at different gates and seeing if there was anything worth stopping for, ie food and drink outlets. The whole thing had left me tired and angry. My colleague, who stayed on the flight to Charlotte never got to Columbus so, if this was a race (albeit a weird one) we were almost neck and neck, although she had the advantage on me and eventually arrived a few hours ahead, but I wasn't far behind. Her flight, as I might have said, sat on the tarmac for a couple hours before heading to Columbus where her bags awaited her; my flight left later, probably around 2000hrs, I can't remember exactly. The pilot said something that annoyed me. I mean, how can I sit back and relax and enjoy the flight after he said "we're expecting a little weather halfway through the flight and will put the fasten seat belts notice up." Great! That's me on tenterhooks.

On the way to Columbus

The first part of the flight was a white-out. There was thick cloud until we reached 30,000 feet, our cruising altitude, and the rest of the flight was easy, even with the odd bit of turbulence. I don't mind turbulence if I can see what's going on outside the window – that's why I hate night flights.

When the plane landed I went straight to baggage reclaim and told the girl there that my bags were in Chicago O'Hare – or so I'd been told. She confirmed that they were indeed at O'Hare and that she'd get them sent to my hotel – Aloft in the university district of Columbus. They were sent on to me and arrived Monday evening, leaving me just one day to wear the jeans and all the other clothes I'd put on Saturday morning. I looked alright to be fair so there was nothing lost despite the situation. In other words, all was fine and I slowly recovered from the ordeal. I got around seven hours sleep and the hotel was fantastic (of which more later).