Last night I had a college Tarot card reading engagement at a castle where I did a seance several years ago.
Yes, that’s really a thing I’ve been doing for ages now. Colleges fly me out to do 4 hours of Tarot card readings for their students.
And do seances.
And mind reading shows.
I could talk about that for hours, but I want to focus on what happened after.
Travel Habits
Since travel tends to be super shifty (read on for more proof), I like to get my hotels on the day-of. I rarely know where I’m going to be with any certainty beyond where I’m being paid to show up.
The Adventure
After last night’s engagement, I book a hotel room by the Philadelphia airport.
I arrive and the front desk person said they were oversold, and the booking system doesn’t know it which is why they took my money but couldn’t give me a room.
Fun.
So I find another hotel that’s relatively nearby; I get in & get settled around midnight.
And I have a 3am wake up call.
Alarm goes off nice & loud & I’m brought out of a deep sleep where I think I was comparing wallpapers.
Get in the car, drop it off at the rental return, and then get to the terminal.
Where there’s a line that curves back on itself because there are so many people at 3:30am.
TSA pre-check saves the day and I get on the plane for our 5ish take off.
But then something that I noticed at check-in, but didn’t fully think about, is answered.
I saw all the bags piling up next to the conveyor belt.
And the pilot explains it while we’re sitting at the gate 20 minutes past take-off time.
“Hey everyone. The luggage system for the whole airport isn’t working. They’re having to go get our bags by hand. The first bag isn’t onboard yet; we’ll let you know when we know more.”
Woof.
I tend to make cushy layovers. An hour and a half. Two hours.
My buffer is eaten up before we leave.
We’ll be arriving in Atlanta after my flight home takes off.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So the travel gods say I won’t be getting home around 11am.
The next flight they can get me on is. . . 11pm.
Double woof.
12 hours in Atlanta.
The Delta app tells me to talk with a gate agent, so I find one that isn’t currently swamped.
I say hi. Treat her like a human. Make her laugh.
Standard operating procedure.
Then she says,
“Oh, I can get you on a noon flight. Let me see your license.”
Then she gets hands me a first class ticket.
Awesomesauce.
The Lesson
And now you know why I say “I do the gig for free; I’m being paid to travel.”
And you also understand why I would have easily gone to an airport bar and get hammered a couple years ago. Glad I stopped doing that.
Hope you’re having a perfectly boring Friday; mine has had enough excitement for the both of us!
Best thoughts,
~Jonathan