Day 2:
6/22/21
Well, I have had a doozy of a day, and it’s only 1:30 San Francisco time – 3:30 US central. The moral of the story is that I cannot ever recommend traveling via Air Canada – or during COVID.
Let’s start at the beginning. I woke up from my Denver hotel early and was on the shuttle by 6:30, to make it to the airport in plenty of time for my 9:48 departure. I sat next to Andrew – a scruffy, long-haired young man in a beanie and a denim jacket. He had come from New York, where he saw the Foo Fighters at Madison Square Garden (awesome, was his review), and was headed to visit his uncle in Dallas (hot as balls, he predicted). He wished me safe travels to Korea and Africa beyond when we parted, heading off with his little bag for the Delta desks while I wrestled my massive luggage (I brought too many books, but I’ll be damned if I left more behind) over to the Air Canada desk – which sat silent and deserted. Hm.
Eventually, with some interrogation of the people lounging around the area yielding valuable Clues, my investigation led me to the United desk area (naturally this necessitated dragging my bags up one elevator and down another, because the Denver terminal is Under Construction). I reached the self-help kiosk and happily punched in my verification number.
ERROR
PLEASE SEE ASSOCIATE
Uh oh.
Now, I only need to write 100 words, because I could go on at some length, but suffice to say Lorraine, the kindly agent, helped me amidst a growing sea of people from 6:50 to 7:50, even while putting out a dozen fires. See, it seems that, while Air Canada had cancelled my KC flight, they had later reinstated it – for Tuesday afternoon. In order to check in for my Denver to SFO flight for Tuesday morning, I FIRST needed to check in Tuesday afternoon – in Kansas City. I helpfully pointed out that this was impossible, and Lorraine agreed, but she was with United, not Air Canada.
While I fruitlessly hacked away at the legions of robots defending any and all human beings at Expedia and Air Canada’s help desks, she bravely sat on hold for me for an hour with a United reservations agent. At last, after an hour, she got through. Amidst the bustling terminal noise, she shouted into her phone:
“No, it’s LAPLANTE! LIMA – ALPHA – PAPA – LIMA – oh. He hung up on me.”
I was sent upstairs, to a purgatory of people shuffling back and forth through a winding sea of queue-tape, eventually reaching a desk with a human. She pointed out that I hadn’t checked in for my KC flight that afternoon and I technically didn’t exist. I helpfully pointed out that this was impossible.
Having persuaded someone of the impossibility of my situation, and showing her the emails that proved this was not a situation I had deliberately engineered as a practical joke (though I haven’t ruled out hte possibility that Air Canada was playing one on me), she said, “I can fix this.” 45 minutes later, she did. In the meantime, I met James (a young man in a plain black tee-shirt, holding a pillow on his small suitcase), who had just missed his connection to Chicago and needed to be rescheduled, and Barbara, a little old woman with snowy white hair and eyes insufficient to the task of reading United’s self-check in screen (I took care of her while I waited). There was also Terri, a middle-aged woman who wrestled 3 enormous bags past me was I waited – she said her husband had the worse end of the deal, he was stuck with 3 crying toddlers while she dealt with customer service. I agreed with her.
Anyway, in the end, with an hour to go, United came through a travel plan actually possible for human beings to follow, and I raced off to make my flight, now just an hour away. Security at Denver was huuuuge, thousands of humans packed in like cattle through a vast chamber lined with blue-uniformed TSA agents, noisy with the barked directions from the agents, overhead security and flight announcements, the beeps of hte various machines sniffing out the Terrorists In Our Midst, and of course screaming children. I somehow made it through the mess in 30 minutes, raced to the train carrying me to Terminal B (cursed the inconsiderate jerks who kept shoving into the closing doors, delaying our departure by at least 3 minutes), wove around so many slow people and grabbed every moving walkway I could, and panted to a stop at the door just as they were closing up the aircraft. They let me on and I was home free!
Well. After an uneventful flight (the blonde girl next to me snored worse than my father, amusingly), we landed at SFO and I had an hour to make my connection to Vancouver, where I would depart for Seoul the next morning. I made my way to gate B-21 without issue, and rolled up to present my documents.
The woman took my passport, boarding pass, and one of my two negative COVID tests, and looked hard at it. Then she called over her partner. That’s never a good sign.
The two women bent over the test, poring over it, even flipping it over. Then they looked back up at me. “This won’t work.”
“What.”
“THis test. Do you have another?”
I did, but it was no better. “They won’t accept this.”
“What do you mean, Korea won’t accept this? It’s a PCR test, exactly what they require. Both Walgreens and CVS swear their tests are good for international travel.”
“It’s not the type of test, it’s your name.”
“What? Bradley LaPlante, just like my passport and driver’s license.”
“Your passport says Bradley THOMAS LaPlante. Your test has to say Bradley Thomas LaPlante. We can’t let you on this plane.”
Indeed, I did not get on that plane, but remain in San Francisco, even as the plane should be winging its way up the northern California coast. Eventually, we settled on a solution:
The airport offered two COVID tests, both of which they assured me woudl be accepted. I could have my bags held at the gate or I could collect them and recheck them (I had them held), and could catch their next flight to Vancouver – which left at 9:20 tomorrow morning. I’d have to stay the night outside security, since their desk was closed for the day and wouldn’t open until 4:30 am, but I’d get to Vancouver in time for my connection.
So, I shuffled over to yet another queue, waited behind two massive families and ahead of a women frantic that she was going to miss her flight to Paris, and got the test (and paid for it out of pocket, because of course I did).
I waited around for the results, which came soon enough, and will spend the night here before resuming my journey tomorrow.
The best part is, when I got my results? My middle name wasn’t on that test, either.
I made them reprint it.
Gwangju Dreaming 