TheBanyanTree: Can you have a bad karma day?

[Peter Macinnis]

I should have realised that all was not well when I saw a drift of haze 
blowing past the cab that was waiting outside the door, half an hour 
before sunrise.  If that didn't get to me, the smell of inefficiently 
pyrolysed hydrocarbons should have alerted me that a situation was brewing.

It was only when we loaded the cases into the car, and carefully placed 
my backpack with reading matter, computer and other key items in it, 
that matters came to a head.  In a manner of speaking.

The driver depressed his accelerator, and billows of white fumes went 
out across the road.  It was a majestic plume, impressive enough, had it 
happened in the Vatican, for people to assume that a new Pope had been 
selected.  But this was not the Vatican, and his utterances were less 
than appropriate, as he used words the clergy should neither her or 
know.  Perhaps he was unsure if we had heard him, as he repeated many of 
them in a syncopated series of permutations and combinations.

Rather than things coming to a head, his head gasket had come to an end. 
  It was what we technically-minded types call expensive white smoke. 
At a rough guess, he was facing two days off the road and $1000.  And it 
would be more expensive if he drove far.

No matter, he called in another cab, and we reached the airport with 
plenty of time to spare.  Then we waited.  We fly Star Alliance, mainly 
through inertia, as we have frequent flyers with them -- usually, we 
manage to get Singapore, Thai or Lufthansa, but today we were to fly Air 
Canada.  Still the same idiot ground crew in Sydney.

Over the years, I have seen them pretending to be many airlines, but 
they remain just one thing.  Muppets.  Star Alliance have muppets at 
Heathrow, Denver, Boston, but the world series Muppetology winners are 
here in Sydney.

I mean queue directors who bark at the queue, telling them to move 
forward while motioning backwards, confusing two Canadian boys with ice 
hockey sticks (let's face it -- if you bring your ice hockey sticks to 
Australia, even in winter, you are probably fairly easy to confuse).

I mean the woman who, instead of working along the queue, informing us 
in order of arrival, plunged in near the middle of it, and told those 
people what was going on, so we patient long waiters ended up at the end 
of the secondary queues for cab vouchers.

I mean the idiots who elected not to ring around, 12 hours earlier when 
it became apparent that our plane was still in Hawaii and unable to fly. 
  Still, I thought positive thoughts and hoped we would get away without 
any major muppetry being committed.  As you can see from the foregoing, 
the power of positive thought is not all that great.

Before long a woman in uniform approached us and alerted us that there 
was a problem.  There would be a delay, and they were hoping to get an 
aircraft in, in time to fly out before the curfew (11 pm at Sydney). 
They were still fiddling, and would we wait?

Well, there wasn't much choice.  Then they came with a letter saying the 
plane would fly out at 0800 the next day, then that was extended to 1130 
-- which meant arriving in Honolulu at 0130.  We were advised, however, 
to call in later -- I just did so, to learn that we are now on Hawaiian 
Airlines, 35 hours later -- we will have two less nights and 
one-and-a-bit days less of recovery time and museuming time in Honolulu 
before we fly on to Seattle.

So about now, when we should be well over onto the summery side of the 
equator, having a bit of a feed before starting our descent into US 
waters, we are sitting at home.  About this time tomorrow, we will be in 
a cab, heading for the airport again.

I wonder if Honolulu's cabs run on the fourth of July?

Betcha they don't . . .


-- 
   _--|\    Peter Macinnis         petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \   manufacturer of automated parakeet flensing systems
  \.--._* <-at Manly NSW, the birthplace of Australian surfing
       v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm