My flight this morning from Egypt to NYC was at 10:10. I woke up at 6 am, had some tea, packed a bag, and had a nice relaxing morning. At 7:30 am I was in a taxi and on my way to the airport, providing plenty of time to board the plane. Then things took a turn for the worse.
As a consequence of following clearly written signs and asking directions, I ended up at the wrong terminal. I was then directed to catch a shuttle, which actually never arrived. Frustrated with the passage of time I jumped into another taxi, only for us to get pulled over by the cops, as apparently the taxi wasn't allowed to pick up customers in this area and it was a decent oppurtunity for the cop to extort some money. After dealing with that, the taxi driver got lost and took me to the rear entry lot of for the terminal I desired, only for once to once again get stopped by corrupt police. The taxi let me out and sped off, apparently telling the police that I would pay them money. This is always a difficult situation because I can't completely reject their authority when they do things like ask to see my passport, but I'm also not just going to cave in and hand them 50 dollars. So with much fuss I managed to eventually get to the top of the hill, into the entrance, and up the escalators of terminal 3.
Within Egypt, you go through security before reaching the ticket counter, and while this is normally not a problem, today it really worked against me. As usual, the security line was long, the police were difficult, and by the time I managed to get to the ticket counter, EgyptAir closed the line to New York right in front of me. As they refused to issue my ticket - at this point it was nearly 9:30 - I grabbed anyone I could to direct me toward a service counter or to provide some assistance. Eventually I arrived at a busy desk, surrounded by folks requesting another ticket. In the meanwhile, all the cops in the airport seem to have some interest in the sweaty, irritated foreigner, and one of them continued to tale me, always within a 10 foot radius. Eventually the cop walked up to the desk and asked them why I was there - but as I was still the fourth person in line, they naturally couldn't answer his question.
The man behind the desk was helpful at least, and he put me on the same flight to JFK tomorrow. In consequence I had to reschedule my NYC to Cinci flight, but after about 5 hours of more aggravation and expense, this did eventually happen.
In the meanwhile, Mallory just called me from La Guardia airport, where she has spent the last 7 hours attempting to fly to Detroit via Standby. Unable to catch a single one of 6 or 7 flights, she is now trying to redetermine her situation, to either stay the night in New York or to take a Greyhound to Detroit. She told me that La Guardia is a complete trainwreck, and as I arrive at JFK tomorrow at 3:30 but will need to reroute to La Guardia for a 7:10 flight, it appears that I might be cutting it close.
Sigh.
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