My reckless and downright foolish assumption of helpfulness at Dallas proved to be an idiotic delusion. Meal voucher, don’t be silly. Accommodation, we ain’t paying for that shit. As for my luggage it’s somewhere between Toronto and Sydney. They assured me it would turn up in Dallas and would be on my flight to Sydney but I’ve learnt to take their promises with a grain of salt. I asked if they could book me into a hotel which I would pay for. They said they would try, they failed. I did it myself in ten minutes. When in doubt give the job to someone who might possibly give a crap.
Despite this wretched litany of failure it is only fair to note that the American Airlines staff did succeed in the only part of the task that was genuinely important. They got me on a flight to San Francisco in time to catch the evening flight to Sydney. They assured me that Qantas staff at San Francisco would get me on the Sydney plane. We both had a good laugh at that and then I wandered off to find my impromptu accommodation.
How to describe my hotel in Dallas? Mix faded grandeur with one of those old Hammer horror movies starring Peter Cushing and you’ve got the general idea. It wouldn’t surprise me if Vincent Price was carving late staying guests up in the basement. The place was enormous, ill lit and with aging but impressive decorations lurking in the gloom. It had big rooms, long corridors and despite the fact that it was fully booked managed to appear deserted. A non specific air of creepiness permeated the whole place. You really wouldn’t be surprised to find the place surrounded by police tape or a team of priests performing an exorcism. The bed was comfortable though.
There is a joke (which I shamelessly appropriated for a recent AAR) that a Finn’s definition of hell is sitting next to a stranger on the bus who insists on talking to you. Having been ground zero for many tedious conversations over the years (and a couple of downright disturbing ones) this strikes me as being thoroughly sensible. You can imagine my relief when the woman sitting next to me on the flight to San Francisco spent the entire time hiding under a blanket. I have no problem with weird as long as it’s the sort of weird that doesn’t require input from me.
On an unrelated note I might have seen the Grand Canyon. Or possibly not. I definitely saw something canyonesque but we were flying over a rather lumpy bit of the United States at the time so it could have been a completely mundane canyon. I’m finding it slightly ironic that I’m actually seeing more of the United States now that my holiday is supposed to be over than I did when it was happening. And by mildly ironic I mean deeply annoying.
OK so it probably wasn’t the Grand Canyon after all. Sorry.
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