Manimal

A short visit to the Atlanta /Hartsfield/Jackson International airport is all it takes to decide that the line between man and animal is very thin.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a "short" trip to said airport.
The parking lots at this place are miles long. Luckily, they offer “Park and Ride” which is a necessity. Otherwise, arriving 2 hours early would be way too short of a time.

A great reason to arrive at the ATL airport early is the fact that if you miss a parking lot, guess what? Take a nice tour ALL THE WAY AROUND the airport to get back to what you missed… Friends, this is not the Airport on “Wings”, this thing is easily the size of my neighborhood… which houses 300 to 400 familes.

And the tips! My goodness. You gotta tip the park and ride guy (he is nice enough to help the ladies get their bags on and off the bus, worth a few bucks at least) then, my wife wants to check our bags at the curb (which saves loads of time) and ya gotta tip them. Which we didn’t do because we didn’t have any singles. But we got our bags back, so I guess she wasn't too offended.

The inspiration of this blog was the way in which you are treated in this establishment. The word “cattle” kept coming to mind. You arrive and all you see is a sea of people. Luckily, 50 percent or more are good looking people. I didn’t get a “Wal Mart” visit feel.

I have a thing about crowds to begin with, all I could do is look at the constant flow of human bodies and think “There are too many people on earth at this point in time.” Since we checked our bags at the curb, no need to stand in a long line at the ticket counter, thankfully, because each line was at least 20 people long. But the security line was insane. Picture the inside of a bank. The little “mouse maze” you have to go through to get to a teller… now, in your mind, increase the size of this bank by about 30 times. Now, picture the mouse maze as being about 50 people long and about 40 rows deep… welcome to ATL airport.

The folks working there are okay nice…. At least they have southern accents. But due to the flow of people, the employees were forced to “herd” us from place to place, If they had been on horses or had sheep dogs I would not have felt any different that I already felt, being grouped to areas like an animal. Some people would take their shoes off without being asked and walk through the metal detector. I was upset enough at this point that I refused. No one asked me to either. I felt like I accomplished something. The lady in front of us had a lot of “carry on” items… oh, a shopping bag full of about 20 small items (no lie, it was bigger than your average beachball), she had a laptop, and a standard size suitcase…
Lady! Relax! Check a bag for the love of God!

SO we are through the metal detector, and for some reason, the fat lady watching the scanner had to take our laptop bag and take a gander in it, then tossed it back on the belt as if it was a bag of stale potato chips.

Once we finally got to our gate (after a subway ride) we got some food and sat in a gate that was not ours, on purpose… this gates flight left later than ours, hence, less people. Why people want to be REALLY CLOSE to their gate is beyond me… sure, crowd up, stand in line for half an hour only to be the first to get on the plane and sit in uncomfortable seats for another half hour…

Well we get on the huge plane and there is an empty seat between my wife and I... would luck smile upon me again? My last 3 flights I have been on have allowed me a spare seat or a whole row to myself! Would the flight gremlins bless me again!
With each person that came in, I had my fingers crossed... I was sometimes distracted by the very fat man across the aisle from us who was eating Ben and Jerry ice cream. A bomb could have gone off and he would not have known, he was FOCUSED on this ice cream... oddly enough, this fat, ugly man had a shopping bag from the "Body Shop" around his knee...?

Well, my wish came true! No one arrived to fill the empty seat, my wife and I were blessed with tons of leg and arm room! And we arrived safely, got a sweet rental car thanks to her boss being a "gold premium member" (A new subaru lagacy) and we checked into our hotel and went out to eat at a local favorite resturant which was awesome... and her boss paid...

Eh… just a few peeves and a few nice things to throw yalls way as we fly to DC. I am on the plane now typing this (actually I am spell checking it and about to post it now in the hotel room). As I looked out the plane window, flying up above Atlanta, all I saw was smog smog smog… this town is nasty. But if Mullins moves here, I am sure it will have more advantages than I thought possible. That man has a way of finding the best in any city… Luckily work was slow today and about 2 people at work know I am gone.