My plan, as I had originally envisioned it, had been a simple one: Drive to Terminal B of the DFW Airport, check baggage in at the Sun Country Service Counter, then drive to rental car station, drop off car, and then lastly, take the shuttlebus back to Terminal B. I gave myself what I had thought was plenty of time to carry out this strategically straightforward set of maneuvers--2-1/2 hours. Alas, such was not to prove the case, for you see, in developing my foolproof travel itinerary, I had failed to account for the important, (yet little known) fact that the Dallas Fort Worth Airport is a work of none other than Satan himself. Now I have no PROOF of this of course, but there is really no other way that I can account for its design. It's an airport that's comprised of four gigantic terminals, each of them semi-circular in shape (meaning it takes TWICE as long to run from one end of it to the other than it would if it were simply rectangular), and each terminal is set so far apart from the others, that the only way to get from one to the next is by driving, or by taking a tram with a top speed of .001 miles per hour. A tram which only moves in ONE DIRECTION I might add. Needless to say, such a design makes it a tad bit difficult to hook up with friends who are arriving at the same airport at the same time as you are, but on different airlines. And if YOU should happen to arrive at DFW on one airline and have a connecting flight with another airline in another terminal that you have only minutes to get to.... Well...You'd better have a good pair of running shoes handy.(And a teleporter). And HERE'S an interesting observation: The terminals at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport are named A,B,C, and E. What the hell happened to D? I guess history isn't the ONLY thing not being taught in the Texas public school system. It appears the Alphabet as another subject not being touched upon.

These design flaws, as annoyingly user-hostile as they are, are nothing compared to what I feel is the DFW Airport's biggest design flaw: parking garages that all look EXACTLY ALIKE. Who was the guy responsible for THIS brilliant engineering decision? (And I KNOW it was a guy, women just don't DO this sort of thing, because they're smart enough to know that getting lost inside a big, dark, scary place like a parking garage, is NOT a very pleasant experience. Whereas men on the other hand, well... they NEVER get lost ...or at least, they would never admit that getting lost is a thing which might possibly HAPPEN to them at some point in their lives.) So all of the parking garages wind up looking like cookie-cutter replicas of each other, and needless to say, my luck being what it was that day, when I arrive at the airport, I park in the WRONG GARAGE----The one on the EXACT OPPOSITE end of the terminal where I needed to be, of course. After hauling my luggage (with its broken tug-strap) for a distance of about 20 gates or so (or the equivalent of about 200 miles), my eye catches sight of a skycap whom I promptly hire to take me to the Sun Country Service Counter. He does. It's only 25 yards away. Turns out I had misjudged the remaining distance to the counter and so, I wind up shelling out 5 dollars to some guy for doing exactly 3.7 seconds of work.

Well. It would seem there were SOME people in this world who were having good luck that day.

The folks at the Sun Country Service counter were nice and friendly. They cheerfully tagged my luggage and sent it down a conveyer belt towards its intended destination. I bade farewell to it, confident that I would soon be joining it on my plane and that we would both, within an hour, be heading back home for Minnesota.
First things first, though, I had to drop off my car at the rental station.
Here's an interesting factoid for you. The Rental Car Station is located at the SOUTH exit of the DFW airport. If you are ignorant of this fact and attempt to reach it by driving through the tollgate located at the NORTH exit, I guarantee the guys in the booth there are going to laugh at you. Hard. And they're going to think you're the biggest idiot God ever put on this green earth. (And they're TEXANS, so you know THAT's gonna be a big blow for your self-esteem). Additionally, if you attempt to reach the rental station by going through the North Exit, the frontage road you will find yourself on is, (you will discover), approximately 2,347 miles in length. When you finally do reach the rental station and have finally eased your car past the "back up and your tires die" gate spikes and into the weather shelter, you will find you have approximately 30 minutes to drop off your car, catch your shuttle back to the airport, and catch your flight.
No worries, mate. There's plenty of time left. Or so I thought.
After inspecting my car and making sure I didn't dent it or have sex in it or breathe on it wrong, the rental car station staff gave me a slip of paper and motioned me inside the rental office so I could pay off my bill. Once I had made my way inside the office, I came upon a scene which all too closely resembled the rental car office scene from the movie, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." You all remember that scene, don't you? Steve Martin gets screwed over by the rental car agency and starts laying in to the over-friendly counter staff lady, venting his frustration with a speech in which he says the f-word no less than 169 times. The over-friendly rental car lady counters with what is undoubtedly the best line in the entire movie."Well sir... I guess you're f**ked..."(Or something to that effect.) Playing the part of Steve Martin on this bright sunny afternoon, was a middle-aged African-American woman who was hysterical over having an extra 300 dollars added to her bill for returning the rental car two days late. The part of the nice, over-friendly counter lady was played by a nice, over-friendly counter man who looked the lady straight in the face and said.............. Well, he didn't say "You're f**ked," but what he said was basically a company-approved, no-risk-of-litigation, PG-Rated approximation of it. The lady was furious. She started screaming for the manager, who had at that moment had wisely decided that it was an ideal time to take a smoke break. Somewhere in another county.
I timorously approached the service counter and asked the lady playing the part of Steve Martin if I could but in line ahead of her, seeing as how I had a plane to catch in a few minutes and all. To my relief, she sullenly granted me permission to step ahead of her, and within moments, I was signing over a large wad of cash, the rest of my traveler's checks, and all rights to my future firstborn offspring to the "Take Advantage Of You" Rental Car Agency. That being done, I patted the Steve Martin lady sympathetically on the back,(*Sigh* I felt her pain), then rushed out the door to the nearby bus station. If my watch was correct, I had only 20 minutes to get back to Terminal B. Plenty of time. The bus ride was, as far as I could remember, about ten minutes long. That left me enough time to get there, but not much of a margin for error.

Wait a minute. I seemed to remember my watch had been giving me trouble lately. The battery was dying, or something like that was happening because each time I had looked at it, (and no matter how much I had afterwards adjusted it,) it was always five minutes behind. But five minutes couldn't make that much of a difference, could it? I looked down at my watch. Then I looked up at the clock hanging on the nearest wall of the bus station.

My watch was NOT five minutes behind.
Whew.
Wait.
It was TWENTY minutes behind.

Panic.

Big panic.

The rest of the afternoon was something of a blur, but I seem to recall running around the bus-station like a certain feathered barnyard animal with its head cut off. I also remember trying to put in a frantic call to the Sun Country service desk, asking them to hold the plane, but instead, getting sent to pre-recorded voicemail purgatory where my mind fumbled to remember what numbers I had to push to get what person in what department. One primal roar and smashed telephone keypad later, I was rushing towards the shuttlebus to Terminal B, which had just arrived at the station and which was now threatening to head off towards the airport without me. I jumped on board. I'm not real proud of the way I snivelled and wept during that tense, ten minute interval to the terminal, but in all honesty, there really wasn't much else I COULD do at that point. Except lie on the floor in a fetal position and suck my thumb. I was going to miss my flight. there was no getting around it. I was going to miss my flight and I was going to be stuck in a strange town for god knows how long and I wasn't going to get back home on time and my parents were going to worry about me and probably think I'm a big, stupid, irresponsible baby and I wasn't going to be able to go back to work tomorrow and I was probably going to get fired and when my friends heard about this they would probably think I was the biggest dumbass who walked the face of the e--

The bus rolled to a stop. We were at Terminal B. I took my thumb out of my mouth and picked myself off of the floor. I exited the bus and ran towards Gate 34 as fast as my not-very-athletic legs could carry me. (Sheesh, I told myself. Some anime heroine I'd make...) When I arrived, all was silent. The gates were shut. The concourse had been folded up. The plane was out on the tarmac. I had missed my flight by about ten minutes.
Whimper.
Five minutes later, I'm standing at the Sun Country Service counter, giving the staff who worked there the saddest, heartmelting-est, chibi-puppy dog with big sparkly eyes and quivering lower lip look that my tired face could conjure. I told them what had happened and asked them what my options were.
Well, they replied, they didn't have any more flights going out that night, but they could arrange to put me on a flight with another airline. Estimated cost: $475.00.
WHAM! I picked my jaw up off the counter. Summoning the last of my remaining strength, I willed all of my energy into my eyes to make them larger and more sparkly. My throat began to subconsciously emit little puppy-dog noises.
"Well, Ms. Dietzinger, if you like you can take Sun Country's 5:15 flight tomorrow. If you agree to do this, you won't be charged anything extra."
An oblique shaft of light fell on me from Heaven, and I could swear I heard the soft strains of Handel's Messiah playing over the airport sound system in place of the usual muzak. Extremely grateful, I thanked the lady at the counter as profusely as I could, and, after solemnly vowing to name my first child after her, (a vow I intend to keep in the event I ever HAVE children), I went off in search of a pay phone. The flight home may have been free, but I still needed to find a place to crash for the night. There was only one person I could turn to. Lost Boy. Luggage Puppy. Chris the Navy Man. As Providence would have it, he was remaining in Dallas at the Intercontinental Hotel for another day. All I had to do was call him and ask him if I could---

Wait. What was the number for that hotel again? I checked the list of hotels hanging on the wall next to the nearest pay phone bank. The Hotel Intercontinental was not listed amongst them. I seized the phone book which was attached to the phone bank and I began flipping through it. I got to the "Hotels" section of the yellow pages only to find it had been ripped out. I rushed off to find another phone bank. I opened it's phone book and flipped to IT'S "Hotels" section. Ditto. Ripped out.

My lip quivered.
The demons which have been presiding over my luck up to this point are now ROTF laughing their asses off, and clicking their sake glasses together, yelling "Kampai!"

I sighed. Maybe, perhaps, MAYBE, I had with me, in my carry-on duffel bag, a slip of paper with the Hotel's phone number on it. Fortunately for my sorry ass, I found some webpages I had printed out with the Hotel's information on them and had stuffed into the bag before I had left on my trip. Here they were. And here was the hotel's phone number. Quickly, before anything else had a chance to go wrong, I dialed the number and asked for the gentlemen staying in Room 512...

Chris. What a guy. Not only did he come to my rescue by letting me stay in his room that evening, but he also rented a TV so we could hook his Playstation 2 to it and watch his rather extensive anime DVD collection. (Yes, they actually let you buy those kinds of things and let you keep them with you while you're in the Navy. That's something I never knew.) The evening passed pleasantly, and soon it was time to go to bed. That could've been an awkward moment, not knowing Chris very well, I really didn't know if I felt comfortable sharing a bed with him, (even if we were both fully clothed and all.) Chris immediately volunteered to let me have the bed by myself, and when I protested, he threw me that line from Slayers. You know, in that scene where Gourry gallantly offers Lina his bed, saying that no honorable man would sleep in a bed while a lady had to sleep on the floor. As I recall, the scene ended with Lina opting to sleep on the floor with him, but as I was dead tired and really didn't care to know what a night's sleep on the floor would do to my already desperately sleep and health-deprived body, I accepted his offer to take the bed. Don't look at me that way! It's not like HE had to sleep on the floor! There WAS a couch in the room, you know. Anyway, the rest of the night passed rather quietly, although, as it turns out, I probably would NOT have had much worse in the way of sleep if I HAD opted to sleep on the floor...

Tuesday: Day *Yaaawwwwwn* Five

I woke up the next morning, at an extremely early hour. I tried to fall back asleep but it was hopeless. So I woke Chris up and told him the bed was all his. He crawled into it. (I can't remember if he was awake at the time he did so or not. He didn't look it) And he did manage to get himself a few decent hours of sleep. I, meanwhile, spent the rest of that morning getting myself as clean and as freshened up as I could, (considering I had been wearing the same clothing for the past day and night, and now had none to change into, since it was now all sitting in an airport storage room in Minneapolis.) When Chris finally woke, it was nearly nine in the morning, (which left us three hours to clean his room and get it ready for checkout.) In gratitude to Chris for his generousity, I gave him a lovely painted porcelain sake set that I had brought to the convention, thinking my friends and I might hold a sake party at some point during the weekend. (We actually got to the point of buying the sake from a local liquor store, but somehow never got to the point where we actually had the party. Come to think of it, other than eating out, visiting the dealer's room and going to a few panels, I don't think we got to do much of ANYTHING we had originally planned to be doing that weekend. I guess the biggest lesson I learned from this con, other than "Bring your own portable de-humidifer", was "Don't overplan things.") In any case...

It is soon time for Chris and I to checkout. While Chris pays off his bill, I wander over to the nearest pay phone and try to call a cab for ourselves. The cabbie who brought me to the hotel from the airport yesterday had given me his business card, expressly stating to me that if I wanted a discount on a cab ride back TO the airport that I should call him. So now I called him. He picked up his cellphone, which, judging by the way it sounded, must have been made out of old tinfoil and vacuum tubes. Needless to say, trying to arrange a fare with him was a frustrating exercise in..well... frustration, and after a short while I gave up and slammed down the phone in disgust. My mouth was foaming. I was tired. I had no idea where my luggage was. I was still wearing the same pair of underwear I had been wearing for the past 40 hours. Up until that moment in the day, my facade had remained calm and stoic, but now it was beginning to crumble and crack. Meanwhile, Chris is now walking over to join me at the payphone..He has no idea what lies in store for him.

Chris: "Hi, How's it go--"
Me: "I GOTTA GET THE HELL OUTTA THIS CITY! NOW!!!!"

Chris picks up his head and places it back onto his shoulders.
"Okay. We'll have the concierge call a cab for us."
A cross-shaped vein pops out on my forehead. One side of my face starts to tic uncontrollably. Chris slowly backs away, then turns and runs towards the lobby.
A few minutes later, I am being gently led towards a cab by several gentlemen in clean white coats. "Thanks," I tell them." I appreciate your getting me a cab, but I'm warm enough. I don't need an extra jacket. And I'm not entirely sure, but I think you guys might have put it on backwards...." "Just relax," Chris mutters in a supportive fashion as he pats me on the back," We'll be at the airport soon...."

Actually, the ride to the airport wasn't that bad. A little rainy, perhaps, but I didn't care what the weather was doing here, because SOON I was going to be on a plane headed to Minnesota.
I hoped....
Desperately.
Once we arrive at DFW, Chris and I grab our things and head for Chris' terminal, since his flight is the first of the day to leave. We bum around, peruse various bookstores, and eat lunch at a Chinese fast food place called the Mandarin Wok, (or the Happy Panda or SOMETHING like that). Anyway, we have a good time together. Chris is a good conversationalist, (especially if you like hearing all about his upcoming fanfic projects, many of which are quite fascinating, actually. He's actually the writer for Gigi's Silence comic. A talented fella). All too soon, the time comes for Chris to leave, and, with Navy duffel in hand, he is soon walking down the concourse and I was soon left alone. All alone. I found myself wondering what, if any, big disasters lay in store for me between now and the time I boarded my plane at 5:15. (It's strange to think that, with all the whining I've been doing about airport disasters, that I was actually pretty lucky overall. Escpecially considering that if AnimeFEST had only been held ONE WEEK later during the terrorist crises of Sept. 11, that I would've found myself stranded at the DFW airport for at LEAST a good week or so.

And after all that I'd gone through while I was there, I have to say, that that's a fate I would NOT want to wish on anybody. Not even on my worst enemy.

Ahem.
Anyway, to wrap things up, I finally DO manage to make it to my flight without any further problems and I DO manage to make it to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport where I finally locate my luggage (with my precious, precious comictones come to mommy *kiss* *kiss*) all safe and sound. Although finding someone on the Airport staff who could actually point out to me where my luggage was being kept WAS a bit of a struggle.......
Sheesh. The whole darn TRIP was a struggle come to think of it...It was probably more of a hassle than it was worth, really.....

...but in the end, I have to say I was glad I went. Glad because of the people I got to meet and the fun I got to have with them. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Good friends and good fun.....
That and bishounen voice actors frolicking around half-naked in hotel hot tubs. YEAH BABY! Arrooooooooooo!!!!!!!

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