Title : Traveling in The Twilight Zone
link : Traveling in The Twilight Zone
Traveling in The Twilight Zone


No long line of cars disgorging or picking up travelers.
No endless series of taxis and buses.
No pedestrians trying to cross the busy road.
The Austin International Airport was all but EMPTY.
I waked directly up the Delta counter - not one person in line.
I walked directly up to the TSA inspector at the checkpoint - not one other person going through security.
I walked clear to the end of the concourse and passed maybe three or four people. Bemused, I looked back and took a couple of photos.
When it eventually came near time to board my first aircraft, I struck up a conversation with one of the Delta representatives that I've known for years and asked her if she thought they would close the airports at some point. She assured me that there was no way the airports were going to close, but that I could definitely count on a whole lot of flights being canceled. She told me that they had had one flight arrive that morning with ONE passenger on it! We managed to do a little better than that on our flight, and packed that puppy with a whole nine passengers . . . My connecting flight to Indianapolis? Fourteen passengers. When my flights landed I had a voice mail from one of our engineers that lives in Indiana telling that the governor had signed something decreeing that all non-essential companies were to close their doors, and that everyone was required by law to stay home unless they were considered "vital" or "essential" and so the first thing I did was to call my customer to make sure they were going to be open for business in the morning. He assured that they were indeed considered vital, and had just that day been asked to start producing face masks. Thus assured that I was doing the right thing both morally and legally, I went ahead and headed out for the hour drive south to where my customer was located. Along the way, I thought maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to stop at a grocery store and stock up on some sandwiches just in case I wouldn't be able to get food anywhere once the governors decree went into effect. I stopped at a super Walmart, grabbed six huge sandwiches, a 12 pack of Pepsi, and just for shits and grins looked for toilet paper. I've already failed to find any in New Mexico and Texas, so maybe Indiana would treat me better? Nope. No toilet paper in Indiana either!
It turns out that my customers company may not have been quite as vital as my contact had thought, because as I was packing up my tools and spares at the end of the service call, he came back into the rook shaking his head and looking shocked.
"You see all of those technicians out there?" he asked, pointing out the large window into the huge bay.
"Yeah?" I answered.
"Everyone of them just got laid off . . . "
Do you know that I spent a week at the Holiday Inn and never saw a single other guest there in that time. Not one. Including my car, there were three cars in the parking lot and I think two of them belonged to employees. Obliviously no breakfast was served and no housekeeping was provided or offered during my stay. At the end of each day, I made my way through almost empty streets, to my empty hotel where even the people working there hid in a room behind the counter. I think I spent to two entire nights watching "Abandoned Engineering" on the Science Channel while eating sandwiches and slurping Pepsi. For the record, I'm pretty damn sick of store bought subway sandwiches at this point. Just sayin . . .
I had to laugh on my flight from Atlanta to Austin though, when it became obvious why this flight had not been canceled - most of the people on it were Delta flight attendants. By luck, I'd managed to select a flight that Delta was apparently using to transport about a dozen flight attendant on their way to other locations.
So yeah, I'm home now, and I will not be getting back onto another airplane until the dust settles on this virus.
Oh, and if anyone notices that several rolls of toilet paper went missing from my hotel and the airport stalls I visited, I had nothing to do with it . . .
thus Article Traveling in The Twilight Zone
that is all articles Traveling in The Twilight ZoneThis time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting .
You now read the article Traveling in The Twilight Zone with the link address https://momentandadventure.blogspot.com/2020/03/traveling-in-twilight-zone.html
0 Response to "Traveling in The Twilight Zone"
Post a Comment