Blogging From Beantown: The Underground Stranded Again

Seasoned Underground readers know that I travel about as well as your average fresh-caught trout. I’m lively for a little while, then I become glassy-eyed, my color fades, and finally, brain function ceases entirely.

As far as this trip goes, I’m well past the glassy-eyed stage (and starting to smell a little), and while Boston isn’t a bad place, it’s not exactly rich in trout streams, and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend the night in a hotel room that cost more than your average guide trip.

Yet that’s the reality imposed on us (yet again) by my close personal friends at Delta Circus and Airlines, who got us from Bangor to Boston exactly 25 minutes too late to make our connecting flight.

Of course, that’s when you run headlong into the truly Twilight-Zonish reality of modern air travel, where every flight is filled, yet all the airlines are somehow losing money.

It’s an impressive business model, though Delta has gone out of its way to provide a quality travel experience (by not paying a cent of the hotel but thoughtfully providing us with coupons good for a free movie headset — woo-hoo!).

I could whine endlessly about the days lost to travel screwups on this trip, but instead, I’ve got to maintain focus.

Like the trout I mentioned in the first paragraph, today’s air traveler has to stay alert; you’ve gotta zig when the predators airlines zag, and stand up for yourself to get the best in-flight snacks feeding lies.

Sadly, sometimes you’re the wild trout and sometimes you’re the stockie (like now), and the best you can hope for is that you don’t hit your head on a rock when they shoot you out of the tightly packed hatchery truck and into the water with a few thousand others.

Other Vacationers

Let’s hope it goes better for Ian and Charity Rutter, who are taking a few days off the Smokies guiding treadmill to fish for Tarpon in Florida (bastards).

Those bound for the Yellowstone area will want to take note of the river closures there (and find out where they should fish) at the Fly Fishing in Yellowstone site.

See you around the airport, Tom Chandler.

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