Florida was great when we got there

In a previous post, I described the horrors of our AirTran journey to Florida.  Upon arrival, things improved drastically. To start with, we got to sleep in beds.

Even better, we went to what might be my favorite place in Florida (admittedly, my explorations have been limited): the Wakodahatchee Wetlands.  You’re driving along the highway, past all the gated communities and drought-stricken yards of the non-gated communities, and all the sudden you pull into this paradise.  It is chock full of the cuddly, the elegant, and the dangerous: alligators, ibises, a gazillion kinds of birds I don’t know the names for, turtles, iguanas, fish, marsh rabbits, you name it.  Even the plant life is fascinating.  Even the breezes feel like they should be on display somewhere for their sheer perfection.

Next, because we had a lot to squeeze into the one day that AirTran had left us, we swung by “The Girls”, a store/market/pick-your-own-strawberries/pick-your-own-other-kinds-of-berries/produce-stand/petting-zoo/playground.  It was amazing.  While my sister, grandmother and I were relaxing on a swinging bench and watching adorable bilingual five-year-olds piping “es una tortuga!” (petting zoo, remember), I decided I should have children and move to Florida so I could spend as much time as possible in places like this.

My grandmother did not seem to fully approve of this decision, and politely requested that I get married first.

Then we went to relax by the pool, where I acquired vertical sunstripes to complement my horizontal ones from the last time I exposed my pale flesh to sunlight (I’m aiming for a fashionable checkered look).

A good time was had by all.

Friday the 13th, courtesy of AirTran

I’m not positive if the lesson to take away from this is never to fly AirTran or never to fly on Friday the 13th.  I’m pretty sure AirTran is the problem, though.  Here’s what happened:

FIRST: My darling sister and I awoke at the ungodly hour of 3:30 AM to go to Reagan Airport, with the eventual goal of spending a few days in Florida with our grandmother.  We catch EnviroCab  to the airport, which should have given us good karma.

We check in at AirTran, watching several hapless girls ahead of us paying almost $100 to check their oversized bags.

We crawl blearily into the waiting area, and eventually board our 6 AM flight to Atlanta, where we are supposed to catch our connecting flight to West Palm Beach.

This does not happen.  AirTran says it was Air Traffic Control that delayed our first flight so long that we missed our connecting flight.  I don’t have a way to check this, but I am bitter and skeptical, all the more so as I saw that every single AirTran flight to freakin anywhere was (as one gate rep described it) “grossly overbooked.”  They don’t have to give you the free vouchers for kicking you off the flight if you happen to “miss” the connecting flight by a 10 minutes — which we, incidentally, spent taxiing in circles around the airport.  One similarly aggrieved passenger described it as a “victory lap”.

We tried to go on standby on the 9:30 AM flight.  Nothing doing.

We tried to go on standby on the 1:00 PM flight — and they let us on the plane!  It was a moment of heartlifting relief!  But then they kicked us off again, when they realized they had allowed us onto a plane with no actual empty seats.  Oops!

Even though there were a few passengers volunteering to get off the plane in exchange for the free roundtrip tickets they were offering due to the oversell situation, the AirTran peeps said they couldn’t offer money to allow a mere standby passenger to get on the flight.

We spent 12 hours in that Atlanta airport.  Since we had been up since 3: 30, we tried sleeping on the chairs for a bit, then on the floor under some payphones.  The floor was cold and slightly dirty.  I developed a cough, which luckily subsided after about 24 hours.  My sister came down with a cold.  Yay airports!

When we arrived in West Palm Beach at 11 PM, they had lost our luggage.  Or rather, they knew where it was, but there appeared to be only one AirTran worker in the entire airport,  and she was too busy to unlock the door that our suitcases were stashed behind.

At 12:01 AM, we were released from both AirTran and Friday the 13th, and clambered into the car of our grandmother, who had been waiting in the cell phone lane for over an hour, reading magazines with her flashlight and calling occasionally to see if we were planning on joining her.

There are not words.