Hubris Comics

So I haven’t told you guys about the caricature gig that I had to fly out to a couple of weeks ago.

Here’s the general gist-

My client is an ad agency I’ve worked with since they were a small operation years ago, and they’re a big operation now. Their client is a big corporate entity who hosts an event out West.

At one point, a list of possible fun things to include in the event was presented to the Big Client. Caricatures by Greg was on the list, and apparently it sounded like a good deal to them.

After jockeying around on the day rate and schedule, we were a go. I got pens and paper and a couple of nice suits together and, as usual, got nervous the closer the event drew.

The flight out there worried me. I don’t recall a lot of flight issues years ago. But then, years ago the Memphis airport was a hub of one kind or another. Not so at the moment. Flying out of Memphis simply means that there will ALWAYS be a layover at some hub somewhere between here and anywhere else. This time, the layover was in Phoenix and was to last 40 or so minutes. I have to admit, that worried me. I haven’t had many flights in the last few years that came off without a hitch of one sort or another, and forty minutes was a narrow window.

Then, I couldn’t check in the day before the flight. The system would not assign me a seat and so I couldn’t check in, or print out a boarding pass. This made me very, very uneasy. I was sure I would wind up on standby because the airline had overbooked and there was going to be me, shouting about where my seat was on the morning of the flight.

The flight was supposed to go at 7:15 a.m. Not able to stand it for another minute, I rolled out to the airport at about 5:45, presented myself at the counter expecting the worst and … got my boarding passes. Of course, I had to pay extra for actually having baggage. I’m also old enough to remember when the idea of being charged more than your ticket price for bringing your stuff too would have been a stoning offense against the nearest airline exec, just as an example for any others that might be standing around. Of course, I then had to walk around the corner and take off my belt and my shoes and let total strangers subject my stuff to exotic high-energies, so heck, having to pay extra for a piece of luggage? Pee down my back and tell me it’s raining, sure. But you can’t pack two full suits, a couple of sets of regular clothes and a caricature stand in a carry-on.

At 6:45, the guy at the gate counter (whose name is also Greg) announced that we would be boarding any minute, and the flight would leave on time.

I honestly felt so relieved I could hardly believe it.

But this is airflight, so it went South quick.

A minute or two later, Greg announced that a leak had been spotted dribbling something out of the plane.

And then we heard that the inspection crew was ten minutes out.

And a little after that, the flight crew came out and walked off, not making eye contact with anyone.

You know what happened next, right?

The delays went on and on, eventually becoming a problem where a bit of hydraulic machinery had to be brought in and installed in the plane in place of the one that was dribbling goop on the ground. But Memphis isn’t a hub, so there wasn’t one there, and maybe it could be flown in from Atlanta or Chicago or wherever.

And everyone queued up to see what other arrangements could be made. They opened up two other counters to try to process us as quickly as possible.

To get me where I was going, it looked like waiting for my own delayed flight was going to be my best option. That may or may not have been true. I still wonder what would have happened if I’d made a dead run for a flight to Chicago and crossed my fingers for an even tighter layover there. I don’t know.

I worked with three different gate agents, some of whom were supposed to have been off-duty and all the way back home in bed by the time they got me figured out.

And there was this complication- there was an airport closer to my caricature gig than the one I was supposed to be flying into. It’s a much smaller airport, and more expensive to land in- if you start off with the idea that you’re heading there instead of where I was booked, along with having a rental car waiting on me so I could drive the hour and fifteen minutes or so between the airport and the area of the event.

If they’re re-routing you, though, you can fly into that smaller, closer airport with no extra charge. If there’s a flight that they can get you anywhere near at a hub somewhere between Memphis and there. And when I say ‘between’, I mean “possibly on the East coast and then fly all the way back from there to the West coast.”

The folks at the airline were checking every possible alternative, including getting me on other airlines. It was time-consuming and nerve wracking.

And I’ll continue the tale later…