Airport employees are actually quite nice when you are nice to them. When I arrived at the Waterloo airport (where I was flying to Minneapolis, where I would then fly to Houston) it had been raining for four hundred consecutive hours. It was some sort of October record I think. Half the city was flooded. It had also been raining in Minneapolis for three weeks straight. Minneapolis was entirely underwater because it's surrounded by 10,000 lakes. That seems like an awfully round number to be an actual count of actual lakes. I demand a recount!
My original itinerary had a two hour layover in Minneapolis. This would have been plenty of time to traverse the Minneapolis airport, grab a Big Mac, smoke some Camels, etc. Unfortunately the desk attendant at the Waterloo airport let me know the Waterloo flight had been delayed for two hours due to the Midwest being completely underwater everywhere. They asked if I wanted to fly out in the morning. I did not want to fly out in the morning. My friend Ian was going to be in Houston that night, and it was the only night I was going to be able to see him. I told them I'd risk the flight. They asked if I knew anyone in Minneapolis I could stay with if I get stranded. I said of course I do. I travel to big cities all the time and know tons of people in all of them. They were very impressed by this.
They sincerely apologized to me for the inconveniences, potential and real. I told them it's not their fault. I said they don't control the weather. The desk attendant got overly excited at this statement. She said I was the only person all day who realized that, and that she'd let her counterparts in Minneapolis know about how nice I was. That's when I turned around and noticed my soon to be fellow passengers had pitchforks, demonic eyes, and forked tongues. They didn't appear to be very nice people.
When the flight finally landed in Minneapolis, it was exactly six minutes prior to when my Houston flight was to depart. I walked out into the terminal and asked a new desk attendant if I stood any chance of making it to my connection flight. She looked at the map. She said probably not, as I had THE ENTIRE AIRPORT TO TRAVEL:
I turned around to start running, and she said WAIT A DAMNED MINUTE!!! Are you Jay? I said yes. She said she'd heard about how nice I was in Waterloo. She'd call and let the other desk attendants know I was coming, but I'd better hurry. I then started running. Luckily I had started Farrell's a few weeks beforehand, so exercise wasn't a completely foreign concept. Running in flip flops was a little foreign, but it was an airport, almost everything around me was foreign. I ran halfway through the airport and got on the tram. The tram took interminably long. It was like a bad British comedy where I hurry hurry hurry only to have to wait in a motorcar I can't control with strangers who don't understand the urgency of my situation. You know, that British comedy. I think that scene is in all of them. Mr. Bean.
The tram finally got to the other end of the airport, and I pushed out of the tram and started to run down the terminal. My flip flops clacked on the floor. It was annoying. At one point I dropped my book and it slid on the floor several feet in front of me. Without skipping a beat I picked it up as I ran by it. It was so graceful people cried. I made it to the gate for the Houston flight. The door was closed. I panted. The desk attendants asked if I was Jay. I said I was. They said they'd been holding the flight for me. They then radioed the plane and told them to open back up the doors. I don't think this has ever happened in the history of airports. I was fifteen minutes late for this flight, and they held it for me. You're welcome everyone else on the plane.
The lesson: be nice in bad situations you jerk ass sons of bitches. Good things will happen.
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