Travel Log: The Great Midwestern Road Trip #2
The Great Midwestern Road Trip Part II: Lessons Learned from a 7.5 Hour Flight Delay
[From June 4th to June 13th my family piled into a rental car and drove through eleven states straight down the middle of the country. This is Part II. Click here to see all parts.]
A Man with a Plan
I don’t know if travel agents and clients are still a thing, but I know there are still dads and captive children. Among my useless caveman vestiges, I can really move a small group from one place to another. The aggression, knuckle hair, and libido are doing me no earthly good, but watch me shine when anyone in my family ridiculously proclaims they can’t fit ten days worth of clothes into a backpack that Budget Air will count as a personal item.
To understand me and trips, you need to know two things. First, I love finding things that are great and terrible. Second, I have obsessive compulsive disorder, and not the fun kind that people say they have but don’t really have. (“I totally have OCD! I always wash my hands before eating!”) In the weeks leading up to a vacation, I’ll regularly be up past 4:00 AM checking if hotel prices are dropping, what activities are where, what is open and when, and then I’ll check it all twenty more times until I fall asleep in front of the computer.
A classic Daniel Staker trip will come with a color-coded schedule, time blocked out in 15 or 30-minute increments, with “accordion” activities scheduled in case we run too far ahead or too far behind. It’s a Swiss watch operation enhanced by a history of event planning.
In other words, I’m tons of fun.
Note: I didn’t take many pictures during my delay, for some reason, so I’m left with what Unsplash provides. Credit.
Welcome to Sun Country
It was through this thoroughness, obsessively changing variables here and there on Google Flights, that I discovered an usually cheap flight from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Direct flights between these Delta hubs aren’t rare, but when I clicked the link I was taken to a foreign place I’d never known before: Sun Country.
Have you ever heard of Sun Country Airlines? Go ahead and search for it online, because that’s what I did, and I learned it was pretty real. At least it has planes and everything.
Apparently, they’ve been around for over forty years founded with the noble mission of taking people in Minnesota to places that aren’t Minnesota about once every twenty-six days. Luckily I live in a state with a shload of National Parks and stunning western landscapes where it regularly cracks 100 degrees, so we qualify as “not Minnesota” for the few months when winter isn’t trying to kill us.
The Sun Country destinations map, showing all the places that aren’t Minnesota. All but twelve of these routes are seasonal. Click for more details.
Had we been traveling round-trip, the sparse nature of flights would’ve been a serious issue. (Honest: I now have $400 of vouchers with Sun Country. The only place I can fly from her is Minneapolis, and the shortest time I can stay is apparently 16 days.) But for a one-way traveler short on cash after quitting his job as part of a midlife crisis, this was an amazing option. There aren’t a lot of ways to skip 1,000 miles of Wyoming and South Dakota for $89.
Sun Country, here we come.
Hard Storage
Not so fast.
With a 9:00 AM flight and my wife’s inclination to be early on preemie levels, we were supposed to leave for the airport before the sun came up. My family was in bed (respectively) early the night before, waiting for alarm clocks to kick-off the trip, when I got a message that our flight had been delayed until 2 PM.
This was going to cut into our fun, but no worries; I had planned for hours of delays. The biggest burden was born by our ten-year-old son, who had really been looking forward to missing church apparently in vain. (God works in mysterious ways.) He was furious when we woke him up and told him to put on slacks.
We went to church, we had lunch together, and then leisurely made our way to the airport. We reached our gate two hours before our flight, just like your dad born in 1940 would recommend.
The kid who was already smarting about church was now mad he had to sit in an airport for two hours. Little did he know…
The first sign things were amiss was seeing the whole flight crew together standing in a circle and talking with each other. Since when do you see them altogether at once?
Normally, on person would show up here, and another there, and one-by-one they’d make their way onto the plane well out of my view. But here they were, circled up, like an AA meeting. “My name is Roger, and I work for Sun Country.” “Hello, Roger.”
Soon it was the time we should’ve been boarding, but the crew remained steadfastly at the gate.
I asked my wife to see what was going on, because I’m huge and, as my mother-in-law likes to say, “swarthy.” It’s pretty hard for me to ask a question that doesn’t make others feel attacked, especially when I’m yelling and cussing.
When my wife asked if there was going to be a delay, the woman at the counter reassured her that we were roughly on schedule before nervously squirting out that the plane was definitely there at the airport already. This unprompted admission did not engender the confidence intended. When my wife correctly honed in on the issue of the plane’s location, the woman again reassured her it was at the airport, but that it was in “hard storage,” and only needed to be brought to the gate. She then apologized for our son having to go to church, and my wife sat back down.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the “hard storage” of planes since. I still don’t have a clue what it means other than two things. First, you can rest assured your plane isn’t out there on the tarmac with a sheet over it like some ghost in a damned Charlie Brown Halloween special. Second, one does not simply walk a plan out of hard storage.
We waited hours being told all the while that we were just a couple minutes back.
People in soft storage. Credit.
At one point I decided to ask the pilot if he knew what was going on, after all, he wears a military uniform so that I know he’s an authority (though the epaulettes were trying a bit too hard). He tried to reassure me that he had “finally gotten corporate” on the phone, and that a plan would be here in 15 minutes and then take about 20 minutes to flip, but I was not comforted.
I wondered what was going on with this company that the pilot was making cold calls to headquarters to try and figure it all out himself? It was like he Dr. Sam Beckett who had just quantum leapt into SLC and was trying to figure out why 180 Minnesotas were very angry (meaning they were still waiting patiently, but had stopped smiling altogether).
I returned to my family and told them the pilot had said it would be about 45 minutes, but there was no way in hell it was going to be 45 minutes.
Possible Slogans
At 3:30 I received a text saying the flight was now scheduled to leave at 3:30. Given that none of us, including the crew, had boarded, this seemed like the most glass-half-full statement I was ever going to see in my life. “I mean, it hasn’t happened yet, but there’s still 28 seconds before it’s 3:31, so you never do know.”
At 4:00 PM we were told we’d be departing at 3:50. Now we were clearly past optimism and onto alcoholic-uncle levels of self-deception. “I mean, it’s not 3:50 yet somewhere.”
But at least when I got the text at 4:00 PM, the plane was allegedly at the airport. I say “allegedly” because they announced it had arrived (to which the Minnesotans continued to not smile), but I could not see it through the giant window, and, you know, usually you can see a plane (Wonder Woman’s jet being the main exception).
Whatever the case, we huddled by the counter and waited in great anticipation for them to call for Zone 42B. We jammed our way to the front, scanned our boarding passes, and then I strolled the most comically long gangway I’ve ever been a part of, which isn’t saying much, because every other gangway was not comically long.
Seriously, it was less like boarding a jet and more like filming the title sequence for Get Smart.
After zigging, zagging, then meandering, before zagging some more, we ended up in the middle of no where, the airport nothing more than a spec on the horizon and a notion in our memories. We stood bewildered, and that’s when the bus showed up to take us the rest of the way. It took nearly 30 minutes to get from gate to jet. This is not an exaggeration.
Stairs presumably waiting for a bus and a Sun Country jet. Credit.
You know how embarking and debarking just flies by? Now imagine doing with with a mile walk and a too-small bus ferrying people. A group of thirty would arrive, take a painful amount of time stowing their luggage and getting seated, and then nothing at all would happen for some time … until the next group of thirty arrived.
I looked at my watch and marveled that 30 minutes ago the airline had the audacity to predict we’d depart in negative 10 minutes—surely they knew about the bus ride before I did?
During the journey I spent some time thinking of possible tag lines for the budget airline. Here goes.
Sun Country Airlines: Bless Our Hearts
Sun Country Airlines: Unrivaled Optimism
Sun Country Airlines: Why Take the Bus When You Could Take a Plane AND a Bus?
The Truth
It’s easy to have fun at Sun Country’s expense, but at this point, for the sake of accuracy, it’s important to call attention to some basics.
First, everyone was polite. Second, no one died or was injured. Third, we were flying halfway across the country for $89 each. Fourth, I now have more credits than what I initially spent, and I never even talked to anyone about it. Sun Country did what they could.
And while I made some jokes earlier about the Minnesotan temperament, it really did make the whole thing more pleasant. At one point, about 4 hours into the airport experience and 7 hours into the total delay, I realized no one gotten into a fight with a gate agent or even raised their voice.
I wondered if that was amazing, and I was able to confirm it was when we were flying out of DFW ten days later. We had our gate assignment changed twice and people, not even knowing where the announcements were coming from, just started shouting their obscenity-laced complaints out into the open air.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved that reaction too. Personally, I might prefer it. But I still have to tip my hats to those frosty Minnesotans.
Time to think. Credit.
Life Lessons
So what is the point of all this? Thanks to hard storage, I had a lot of time to think, and thanks to the quiet Nordic folk, I had enough quiet. As mentioned, I’m a schedule guy, and normally a wrench like this would’ve messed me up much more than it did, but here are the Four Noble Truths of Traveling that kept me pleasant.
First Noble Truth of Travel: Accept that You Are Not in Control
This is easier for some than others. If you’re the type of person who starts every vacation with an Excel spreadsheet, it might be on the harder side, but you should still accept your lack of control because it’s completely true.
This was something I learned on another trip while tumbling in the ocean. That’s a whole other thing I can talk about for hours on end, but here I will just say that the ocean can teach you in indelible ways that you are not the boss.
My domain of control largely stretches between my ears, and even that is debatable. The truth is I do not have the capacity to get to Minneapolis in 140 minutes on my own. I’m not even sure I have the ability to get there on my own period. Columbus, who was a real rat bastard, needed the help of Spanish royalty and crews just to get to the wrong place.
So I don’t control the airline, the airport, or gate agents, and giving up that false notion of control allows me to sit back and enjoy the show. Or not enjoy the show. Either way, it’s the show.
Second Noble Truth of Travel: Realize Planning and Adaptation Are Not Opposites
This is actually something I’m constantly learning in all areas of life. For years I thought the plan was the plan and getting off plan was not the plan. Not so.
I’ve come to realize these aren’t opposites, but are stages in execution. Yes, you make the plan. Yes, you try to consider all the variable. Yes, you should do your best and maybe, if you’re lucky or at the kids’ table of life, then everything will go nicely according to plan. But don’t count on it.
Real life has an impossible amount of variables to contend with. Experience is valuable, but it should never be confused with knowing.
As I sat in the airport with snot covered kids and people cruising TikTok without headphones, it was clear my plans were shot. I wasn’t going to see the Mall of America that day. There wouldn’t be any crossing the border into Wisconsin for ice cream. We wouldn’t be making our dinner reservation scheduled for seven hours after we were supposed to land.
It would be okay. I knew we could figure out what to do instead. What other choice did we have? Planning comes first and adaptation comes second.
Third Noble Truth of Travel: Understand What You’re Really Spending
Remember that reservation I had? We called the restaurant from the plane and told them our flight had been delated 7.5 hours, and they were nice enough to move us to a much later time of day, and we were still too late, but they fed us anyway.
When we told our server about our ordeal, she said she never flies with Sun Country. She wasn’t snobby about it. Instead, she very reasonably pointed out that when something goes wrong at Delta, they can get another part, mechanic, plane, or whatever to the spot very quickly. With some exceptions that I’m sure exist out there, most times they have the resources to make sure you don’t lose a full day of your trip.
In her opinion, she said Sun Country did not have those same resources, and since she gets so few vacation days per year, she doesn’t want to spend any of them waiting for a plane to come out of hard storage.
Now I don’t mean to put down Sun Country or prop up Delta. Those were just the examples she used and I’d be willing to fly with both airlines in the future. (It was $89!) The thing I was impressed with was that, unlike me, this woman had a better intuitive sense of what she was really spending.
Sometimes the most important factor might be money, but other times it could be time, energy, or good will. Whatever it is, you can’t make good decisions about how to spend until you know what you’re spending, which dovetails nicely into my last lesson…
Fourth Noble Truth of Travel: Look for Value and Not for Price
I grew up in a relatively poor family (a ton of kids on a receptionist’s salary) while my wife grew up in a family that wasn’t poor, but they were good at saving, so the effect was the same. We’re both inclined to be cheap.
On this trip my wife had to bounce two days earlier than the rest of us to get back to work. I tried to book her a flight through Frontier, because, you know: cheap. I learned that if you are a Bear Den member, and you’re logged in, your name will appear on the boarding pass regardless of whose name you entered into the passenger field. You won’t be given a warning about this. It won’t tell you it’s changed the info you entered into the passenger field.
Fixing this issue was a multi-day bureaucratic nightmare filled with a litany of nonsensical paradoxes that can only come into existence when a companies business model is built on screwing you.
My case was elevated to managers, reviewed by committees, and still I wasn’t given any help. After a particularly lawyerly demand letter, they finally figured out they actually did have the technical ability to refund my card (something they ridiculously claimed they did not have multiple times).
When I booked my wife’s next flight, I paid the extra $50 for her to fly on a legitimate airline—one where I could be assured that her terrible experience would be due to market factors and sincere incompetence, as opposed to Frontier where it seems to be an intentional part of the business plan. And it turns out it was the most normal airline interaction we’d have. It was a real win.
Too late am I learning that the best flight is often not the cheapest.
I watched this until 2:00 AM once. Considering how often I go there, I’m glad I dropped $40 for a falls view. Good value. Credit.
My personal advice here. If you go to Niagara Falls, spring for a room with a falls view. It’ll cost more than one that looks out over the Ferris Wheels and year-round haunted houses, but you can sit there all night staring at the falls, and there is a value in that. If you’re at Disneyland and your kids are flagging, spend $400 on fries and ice cream. There’s serious value in appropriate blood sugar levels.
Conclusion
So for $89 I got to skip Wyoming and most of South Dakota, plus I had a ton of epiphanies. But maybe the real cost was losing the first day of the trip. Ah well. I don’t control everything and we were ready to adapt. And the good people at Manny’s Steakhouse even held our reservation.
Not too bad for Day One.
Coming up: an ode to Minneapolis, an oil painting of bull nards, and an angry man at an outdoor piano.
