My trip to Salzburg held such promise. Scott upgraded my ticket and I was looking forward to a glass of wine and kicking my feet up while watching a movie and eating my cardboard-like food off of real china. Sadly, I had forgotten to make my proper offerings of first bought suitcase sacrifices to the gods of travel. The consequences of this oversight became apparent as my new boss and I ran out of small talk just as we hit traffic – about 15 minutes into the trip. The ensuing 45 minutes consisted of stilted sentences punctuated with lifetime-long pauses. We were late, and awkwardly trundled two suitcases, my laptop, my camera, a giant cardboard tube and an enormous cardboard box chock filled with photocopies needed for our meeting.
We managed to make it onto the airport parking lot shuttle bus and found we had been blessed with a very helpful bus driver who clearly saw herself as an ambassador/tour guide of the Dulles Airport economy parking lot. She regaled the passengers with a list of the most common complaints she hears along her route. Which included important observations that there are not enough blue lot busses, buses aren’t clearly marked, and speeding tickets are too high. The speeding tickets prompt follow-on information about Virginia fines, a disquisition on tired travelers trying to get home and tips. This passenger could contain it no longer and started giggling. This is no ordinary giggle it is a contagion. It reaches and infects the flight attendant on her way to training in Atlanta, moves from her to the teen sitting next to her, on to the youngish man who told us he used to live in Atlanta and soon a full-fledged epidemic hit the bus. Rather than quarantining the passengers, the friendly bus driver pulls over, without unloading her cargo, to help a lost looking woman on the side of the street. The passengers looked at each other what could be done? This is a shuttle ride like none other. I just crossed my fingers that we are going to make it to the United terminal before the 45-minute cutoff.
