At the Airport
Posted on August 10, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 25 Comments
Surprise! My flight’s been delayed! Apparently my travel karma is still in full effect. That said, it’s not a huge delay so far, and at the very least it’s a direct flight, so I don’t have to sweat the missed connection.
To occupy my time I’ll be writing a Denvention report, but I’ll do it offline because the free wifi at the Denver airport is a little wonky. But the short form, as you might expect: I had a pretty good weekend.
Thank you to everyone for your congratulations and good wishes; it’s really cool to open Whatever in the morning and see all you folks. It makes my day enough that not even an airport delay is denting it.
I hope you have a safe flight. Thanks and I’m very happy for you. I’m reading Old Man’s War right now and I’m almost done and I am truly impressed and can’t wait to read the rest.
Speaking of Karma, I don’t know what I did to deserve it but I have this huge zit in that space between my eyes. I’m a financial advisor and clearly have to deal with people on a daily basis and now I’m going to have to find a way to cover this planetoid orbiting my face. The guys at work are gonna have a field day tomorrow.
End Rant.
P.S.
Congrats!
Ah, Denver, where the airport is full of Masonic world domination imagery:
http://www.anomalies-unlimited.com/Denver_Airport.html
Congrats and hurry up with the report. Vicarious minds want to know!
Don’t worry; I’m sure you have enough residual awesome by now to enable you to fly by force of will.
Congratulations!
I bet it is that big, spooky-looking award that has TSA shutting down Denver as we speak.
I must be hogging up all the good travel karma. I made it from DEN to PDX without a hitch, and my suitcase was even the second bag to come out on the carousel at the PDX baggage claim. I mentioned the suitcase part to the guy at the Thrifty rental counter; he suggested that I buy a lottery ticket.
Early or late, have a safe trip home. I hope the rocket makes it home safely, as well. I assume you had to ship it home by FedEx or some such; I ran into Robert Charles Wilson at the Santa Ana airport two years ago at LACon, he said he could never get his Hugo (which he had just won for Spin) past TSA security.
I’m in the East RCC now… hopefully my trip to LHR won’t be quite the disaster that getting to DEN was. Granted, at least I’ve got a Screwdriver on the table, so it could be worse. (I love frequent-flier miles.)
Congratulations!
You’re undoubtedly reaping the results of your anti-Duran Duran rant on this, National Duran Duran Appreciation Day! ;)
I hope that you have a safe trip home.
Best wishes for a safe trip home.
to Sam@2 Easy. put a Band-aid type thingie across the part of your nose that is affected so it will cover the zit. To anyone who should ask you say “I cut myself shaving…” try to go for menacing saying it. Works even if you are a bearded person. Play it hard for the “don’t any of you punks ever mention it again…”angle. Act Dirty Harry auditioning for the Joker’s part for “the Dark Knight”. Good Luck.
to sitehost…Hugo Award winning sitehost I mean
Happy trails, to You and Yours!
Congratulations on your Hugo!
I’m hoping you’re safely home soon, because no one deserves to be stuck in an airport.
Also? Thanks for all the vicarious entertainment this weekend, even if you didn’t know you were providing it.
DIA.
Delay It Again.
Congrats, John.
Ah, Denver. I’ll drive there next time. My father told me horror stories of being stuck there, then I got stuck there. I was lucky and able to catch the next flight. The guy in the seat next to me PAID for another ticket to be sure he got on the next one.
Hopefully you’re on Frontier and get to watch the cool map of yourself flying home.
Congrats on the Hugo, as well. I thrilled with the win, and perhaps even more so by the nine vote margin for Best Novel. Combined, it’s completely cool.
Dude, you won one Hugo, came within a hair’s-breadth of winning another (against Chabon, no less), and you mean to tell us that you can’t just fly home under your own power? Please.
Re: losing the Hugo to Michael Chabon…not for nothing, but when you see one of the Hugo-nominated novels on the book sale tables at Costco, for God’s sake, you gotta figure that novel just might have an edge. Even so, John, you made it a close fight. Woohoo to you for that.
(Is the secret to get Costco to sell your book? If so, I’d better tell Jeff for when The Molten Flesh finally comes out…)
Congrats, condolences, all that, but wow I just saw an absolutely amazing men’s relay in Bejing. Eight one hundreds of a second and the U.S. takes gold. Utterly cool to watch, and even the announcers were screaming with emotion.
They beat the world record by 4 seconds. Wow.
No, seriously, congrats on the Hugo. *Thumbs Up*
Hope you’ve made it home safe.
Apparently my punishment for smooching your bald spot (PER JIM WRIGHT’S REQUEST!!) is to have a volcanic ash cloud cause the cancelation of all flights into Alaska. Good thing I have friends in Seattle.
Congrats, again, on the Hugo. And THANK YOU, again, for being such a good sport this week.
See, this is why they should give out actual rocketships for Hugo awards.
Then you could fly yourself home. To your space-home, in space.
Congratulations, John! I’m sure that holding that behemoth of a trophy was a moment of sheer joy. Here’s hoping that you get to experience it again sometime soon!
Jay
Flight delays are inescapable these days. Every single time (100%) of the flights I have taken or been in direct contact with (pickup/dropoff/etc.) in the last year have been delayed.
Chris – I tried to read that thing, but the stupid of it made my brain hurt too much. Whoever wrote that thing makes the “The Moon Landings Were Faked” crowd look rational and intelligent by comparison.
PWSTrain – Whenever anyone mentions the Denver airport, it always raises complaints – “Oh, the Denver airport sucks, because I was delayed there.” Well, yeah, that happens. Happens at O’Hare, JFK, DFW and LAX, too. Donno why Denver draws particular ire for it. Personally, I feel a little spoiled by having Denver as my home airport – easy to navigate, plenty of space, quick baggage return. My only complaint with it is that using public transit to get to or from the airport is a bit more of a hassle than I’d like. Otherwise, I love it.
John – Congrats on the win!
Doola!: Isn’t that insane? Figured I’d share the intellectual pain.
Mark@21: Please forward me your travel plans, that I might endeavor to never be on the same flights as you.
You’ll have to start flying through Salt Lake, which has the best on-time record (both departures and arrivals) of the 32 largest airports. I guess that will need to wait until next time you go to the left coast, though.