Airports

One of the sad parts of growing up is that you don’t get to see your family that often, especially if you move to a different state. This is one of the best parts of holidays. Right now, I get to see my family for Thanksgiving, Christmas and, oddly, Labor Day.

From where I live in Iowa, getting to my parents’ house takes at least 13 hours by car. I want to stress the “at least” modifier. What this means is that if I were to leave at 7 a.m., I would get to my parents’ house by 9 p.m. I’ve done this a few times, and more than any other factor this is why I bought a plane ticket for Thanksgiving.

Booking a plane ticket at any time of year is a tense experience. You know there are different ticket prices depending on where you leave, what time you leave, what day you leave, how old you are, the type of computer you’re using, the make and model of your car, your mother’s maiden name and your last two horoscope readings as printed in the National Enquirer. This is why discount flight websites exist and why there are so many of them now that websites exist that compile the prices of the other websites, and almost all of them are within twenty dollars of each other. But I played it smart—I bought my ticket near the beginning of October, where it cost me about half as much as what it would have cost had I tried buying that sucker in November, which is still more than I would have paid in gas prices, but got me there in about half the time, almost none of which required me to be awake.

I do have to say, the modern flight experience is somewhat curtailed from when I really started flying, which was only about two years ago. Right now, they serve you a drink in cups that are specially formulated not to hold all the contents of your standard pop can, and if you want a snack you can feel free to buy a pack of peanuts or pretzels. It’s sad that at least the airline I was flying had cut services, and I think it’s probably a matter of time before you see credit card readers on everything, including the bathroom and the oxygen mask dispenser.

On a more positive note, the one thing that really stuck with me on this trip was the O’Hare International airport. I know I’ve talked about this before, but airports are basically gigantic waiting rooms. Everyone there is trying to get to someplace else, and if you’re in an airport, you are playing the waiting game. In Rochester and Traverse City, there are two shops/restaurants. Rochester has the 331 Express, an extension of an Applebee’s-type restaurant that, while nice, is terrible as a hangout unless you’re going to buy a meal or an alcoholic drink. I suppose you could buy a coffee there, but it would be youre standard regular coffee, not one of the trendy neo-coffee house types. In fact, Rochester’s airport owes its very existence to the Mayo Clinic. It’s a hub of southern Minnesota/northern Iowa because people from around the world fly in to have Mayo cure them of their illnesses, and some of these people are kings, heads of state and CEOs, all of whom could build an airport like Rochester’s with a month’s salary. So Rochester is a hub of air traffic that is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

Traverse City’s airport is similar to Rochester’s, but it’s more inviting. After all, Traverse City is an up-and-coming tourist city, and you can tell that a lot of effort went into having the airport be folksy and comfortable, yet still modern as possible. What’s really different, though, is the airport café, which is a combination of coffee shop, deli and gift shop. More than anything else, this is what separates Traverse City from Rochester. Rochester’s 331 Express is an awkward bridge between having a quick bite to eat and having a complete sit-down meal , which makes sense, since it’s trying to cater to your average middle (now lower) class Joe, and a bevy of medical residents, doctors, and the aforementioned power players of the world. Traverse City, on the other hand, kind of accepts that when you’re in an airport, you’re not too concerned with having a proper meal as opposed to just eating something to keep you from getting hungry, and that you really don’t want to be in the airport anyway. So you have a quick bite, you get a decent cup of coffee with some non-coffee flavors, and maybe buy a book about Michigan to read to help pass the time. Personally, I like the Traverse City airport better.

Then you have O’Hare, which I think may be the Walt Disney World of airports, although I haven’t been to JFK yet. As much as I never ever want to have to depart from O’Hare, being there as a hub between flights is kind of nice. Actually, it’s nicer than it has to be, because when you’re at an airport you are a captive audience, and as you walk along the shops you start to feel like a minnow surrounded by sharks, and you have to wonder whose mouth you are going to swim into voluntarily and ask to be eaten. You know you’re going to be charged more than usual, and you know that you’re going to be charged more than usual for everything, except perhaps at the newsstand. Yes, you don’t have to buy anything, but I always seem to be waiting in the airport at dinnertime, so I either get to have dinner in the airport or wait until I get to my destination and do the trifecta of awkwardness—have your ride drive through town looking for a restaurant that’s open, try to balance getting something good to eat with trying to arrive at your destination, and eating in front of your ride, who of course has already had something.

So O’Hare has kind of upped the ante on restaurants. You have your standard fast food fare, you have your standard coffee shops, Starbucks and Starbucks clones, but then you also have sit-down bars and restaurants. You have a restaurant that apparently serves dishes created by Wolfgang Puck, you have a miniature Chili’s restaurant in the airport, and for some reason this never fails to impress me. Perhaps it’s because these restaurants are better than they have to be. I don’t think anyone actually expects to eat well at an airport—it’s hard to enjoy a good sit-down meal with one eye on your luggage and another eye on the clock—but restaurants like these are all about convincing people to come in, take a load off, and behave as if their luggage wasn’t their dinner date.

In a way, all this is admirable. Yes, it’s just another opportunity for people to sell you something, but if you go with the theory that no one really thinks they’re doing something bad, then what you have are a bunch of people trying to make sure that your wait is as pleasant as possible. Don’t want a latte? Go for a hamburger and fries. Don’t want fast food? Go for a sit-down meal. In fact, why not browse for something that will make your flight easier, or buy a book? If you’re a soldier, there’s a special section for you, and if you want to feel elite there’s always the admiral’s club, where you can feel secure in the knowledge you’re getting charged more for services than the rest of the airport crowd. It’s a nice concept, at least in theory. Kind of an admission that waiting is rarely fun and they know you’d rather be at your destination already, but we’re at least going to try to make you feel good about the time you spend here. It’s nice to feel that way, even as you’re thanking all the currently-worshipped travel deities as you board your flight that you don’t have to stay at the airport any longer.