the Woes of Travel

[aadler]

 
As alluded to last week, I’m currently at Fort Bragg for a short class on a particular man-portable equipment set for field operations. I made the trip Monday … the account of which can be skipped over by non-masochists in that it’s unremarkable aside from the annoyance and inconvenience it visited upon ME.

To begin with, I had a travel itinerary but no orders. In military matters, going somewhere without orders is … awkward, at best. I had noted the absence thereof, and called our training NCO on Saturday (while Susan and I were still on the road returning from San Antonio, in fact), and he said he’d thought those had been sent out already but he would do it again. Well, he did: after I was already in the air, and too late to print them out at home and carry them with me.

Second, I was traveling with another guy from my unit. When we got to Chicago/O’Hare, it turned out that he was ticketed directly through to Raleigh/Durham, but I’d been routed through Washington, DC. I got on the line to see if I could transfer over, take the same flight. Nope, I was told it would cost an extra $400 to send me a shorter distance, on one flight instead of two. To nobody’s surprise, I was unwilling to agree to that. (And, since I was signed for the rental car, the other guy had to wait five hours at Raleigh/Durham for me to catch up with him.)

Third, on the way out of Chicago/O’Hare, the flight was full, and I was required to check my carry-on bag. This was not the door-check sometimes necessary if a carry-on is deemed too large to fit in the overhead bins; no, this would be submitting, to the airline baggage processing system, precisely the things I had packed separately so they would always be within my reach. (Such as my phone charger. And my power strip. And my wallet and keys. And my uniform.)

And, of course, on arrival at Raleigh/Durham I found that the bag had — “for some reason” — been left at the DC airport.

We got the rental car. We made it to the Holiday Inn, and I pieced together a replacement uniform from the spares I’d packed into my duffel. (Except for boots. Till the airline could get my misplaced bag to my current lodgings, I had to get by — unsuitably — with running shoes.)

Finally, when we showed up for classes in the morning, it was to learn that the previous day had been the actual first day of class. And there’s a full day of class scheduled for the last day, when our travel orders make it necessary for us to leave well before noon.

On the bright side, the class itself is interesting and proves to be useful. At least there’s that.