Five hours early in Miami for my scheduled departure flight, I went through the rituals of checking myself in (why can I never remember how to scan in the code on my passport?). I loaded my bags on the scale, then remembered to ask if I could have my American Airlines Frequent Flyer number added, since the card eluded my last-minute search as I was leaving home. Since I had such a long layover, I thought I might try the Ambassador Club Lounge, and the American Airlines Web site said I needed to show my number to purchase a day-pass for $50.
Now, I have never stayed in an airline private lounge in my whole collected history of air travel. The long trip home from California, however, and the prospect of a year of standby travel, convinced me that the better part of valor would be to just consider a one-time membership.
When I started for the security line after the attendant added my numbers, I realized that not only did I not have my baggage claim ticket (terribly important, since my suitcase would sit in the bowels of the Miami International Airport for some five hours before my flight was scheduled to embark), I did not have a boarding pass. Instead, I was holding an odd paper that didn’t even have my name. When I went back to the counter, the attendant issued me a new boarding pass and dug around in the garbage, looking for the old one she had torn in half. There, on the back side, was my claim ticket—with the all-important numbers and codes that make it possible to track lost luggage all over the world.
I wouldn’t have gotten very far in the security line before I discovered the loss of a boarding pass, but I might not have remembered by then that I needed the claim check, and the check-in counter attendant might have moved on to another position, complicating any need for hide-and-seek through the garbage. Airline personnel hear so many laments that most of them turn kind of a world-weary eye on the complicated explanations or excuses of frustrated and less-than-their-best distressed passengers.
At any rate, I thanked God for His traveling mercies and reminded myself that He is perfectly able to jog my thinking when He needs to.
While walking through the airport, I noticed how empty the gates and hallways were at 11:00 in the morning and decided that if I found a recharger port, I would sit there and power up all the batteries I was carrying—my computer, my cell phone and my Kindle—instead of trying the private lounge. Sure enough, I came across an empty gate, an empty port—and it was right beneath the third floor, glassed-in Ambassador Lounge, with all its comfortable guests eating and drinking and working, who were gazing down at us.
I couldn’t connect to the MAI public Wi-Fi and decided to try the Ambassador Lounge’s free-access network connection. Sure enough, there was my e-mail; I sent messages and I received messages. I spent a profitable afternoon, felt productive and even virtuous. Travel and accomplishment—the best of both worlds, and I didn’t even have to pay for it.
Perhaps I would use the $50 to get an airport massage—for the five-hour layover I had before I flew standby on the trip home to Chicago. I wondered if I could include that in my list of traveling mercies.
I spy God!
Now, I have never stayed in an airline private lounge in my whole collected history of air travel. The long trip home from California, however, and the prospect of a year of standby travel, convinced me that the better part of valor would be to just consider a one-time membership.
When I started for the security line after the attendant added my numbers, I realized that not only did I not have my baggage claim ticket (terribly important, since my suitcase would sit in the bowels of the Miami International Airport for some five hours before my flight was scheduled to embark), I did not have a boarding pass. Instead, I was holding an odd paper that didn’t even have my name. When I went back to the counter, the attendant issued me a new boarding pass and dug around in the garbage, looking for the old one she had torn in half. There, on the back side, was my claim ticket—with the all-important numbers and codes that make it possible to track lost luggage all over the world.
I wouldn’t have gotten very far in the security line before I discovered the loss of a boarding pass, but I might not have remembered by then that I needed the claim check, and the check-in counter attendant might have moved on to another position, complicating any need for hide-and-seek through the garbage. Airline personnel hear so many laments that most of them turn kind of a world-weary eye on the complicated explanations or excuses of frustrated and less-than-their-best distressed passengers.
At any rate, I thanked God for His traveling mercies and reminded myself that He is perfectly able to jog my thinking when He needs to.
While walking through the airport, I noticed how empty the gates and hallways were at 11:00 in the morning and decided that if I found a recharger port, I would sit there and power up all the batteries I was carrying—my computer, my cell phone and my Kindle—instead of trying the private lounge. Sure enough, I came across an empty gate, an empty port—and it was right beneath the third floor, glassed-in Ambassador Lounge, with all its comfortable guests eating and drinking and working, who were gazing down at us.
I couldn’t connect to the MAI public Wi-Fi and decided to try the Ambassador Lounge’s free-access network connection. Sure enough, there was my e-mail; I sent messages and I received messages. I spent a profitable afternoon, felt productive and even virtuous. Travel and accomplishment—the best of both worlds, and I didn’t even have to pay for it.
Perhaps I would use the $50 to get an airport massage—for the five-hour layover I had before I flew standby on the trip home to Chicago. I wondered if I could include that in my list of traveling mercies.
I spy God!
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