Expat Texan

One of my Google Search term referrers for today is “june 13th zombie apocalypse“.  I knew it was coming, but I didn’t think it would start tomorrow!  Just in case, you better make a copy of this:

You’re welcome.

Unfortunately, my job has me in the air a lot.  We were supposed to be back in Calgary yesterday, after a couple of days of lecture in Oakland followed by a couple of days tooling around Sonoma.  We got to the Oakland airport in plenty of time.  Got or luggage (and wine) checked, fought through security, and sat waiting at the gate for our flight to arrive.  And then things begin to go wrong.

First, as our inbound flight deplanes, the United gate agents mentions that the outbound flight is on “creeping delay”.  What this term means is that there is a problem with the plane, they don’t know if (or when) it will be fixed, and we get the pleasure of sitting around the terminal until they decide whether we go out, or get canceled.

Next, they suggest that we passengers start calling United reservations and see if we can find other way to get to our final destination.  There’s a problem with the flight, and United’s solution is to have us, the guys who paid them to fly us somewhere, try to fix it so they don’t have to.

After letting us stew for a while - they decide that, even though the repair crew hasn’t yet arrived from San Francisco - they are going to offload our baggage and really, really suggest that we call the United Airlines reservation desk to see if they can find us an alternative way home.

So, we split up - I head to the reservations desk at the Oakland airport, while the Canadian Wife heads to baggage claim.  I’m the 3rd person in a line of about 100 passengers.  It takes me an hour and a half to be helped.  Using this time, I speak to the United reservations desk.  Can they get me to Calgary?  Well, sort of.  Their first offer is a next day 8am flight from Oakland to Denver, with a continuation flight from Denver to Calgary departing at 9:35pm.  Somewhat surprised that I don’t immediately accept their magnanimous offer of a 13 hour layover, they give me another option of flying south to go north.  Oakland to Los Angeles, with a 3 hour layover and then LA to Calgary.  Not great, but better.  I say fine, we’ll take it.  They book us, tell us there’s a problem - our current Denver to Calgary seats have not been released, and require us to continue standing in line until we can speak with a gate agent.  So, another hour (and 2 customers later), we get to the service desk.

Passports, boarding passes, baggage claim tags are all turned over.  The person helping us has no idea what she is doing - which is why it is taking them 45 minutes to process each passenger.  She finally confirms us Oakland to LA on United, and then LA to Calgary on Air Canada.  This is followed by a ton of questions, and it’s finally decided that we qualify for a hotel voucher.  They give us a voucher for a a hotel close to the airport.  It is a dive, so we make our on reservations elsewhere, go to the bar, watch basketball and drink margaritas.

We leave the hotel bright and early, and get to the counter 2 hours before our LA flight departs.  First they insist that we use the check-in kiosks.  I tell them that we were bumped from a flight yesterday, and we have a connection that changes airlines.  They don’t care about this, and refuse to acknowledge that we actually exist until we dutifully try and check in using the kiosks.  We try the kiosk - and it won’t let us check the bags beyond LA.  We stand there obediently until the counter agent decides we have performed adequate penance for daring to doubt the kiosk, and comes to help.  We then find out that, by the way, we can’t ticket you internationally on Air Canada, so the 2 hours spent on the phone and standing in line yesterday got us exactly nothing.  I point out that we shouldn’t have been booked on those flights if they couldn’t, you know, actually get us seats on the Air Canada flight and get us to Calgary.  Our ticket agent acknowledges this, tells us that the people responding to the “crisis” (her word, not mine) yesterday we all junior staff, and most had not been trained to deal with these kinds of situations.  The only senior person we saw was only helping the first class passengers and United elite members - one wonders if they were given reservations that would actually result in them reaching their destinations.  I am not particularly comforted by this information.  The process starts all over again.

The counter agent really wants us to “go sit down”, but we decline and continue to wait.  I get thirsty, so go find a vending machine that will sell me a bottle of water for the low, low price of $2.50.  I feed my dollars in, and this crazy robotic arm goes to grab my drink.  Drink in claw, the robotic arm begins moving frantically and wildly around the inside of the vending machine.  It wants to deposit my reasonably priced water in a little side door for my retrieval, but the side door won’t cooperate.  After zigzagging back and forth across the front of the vending machine - the robotic arm gives up and comes to a crashing halt.  The vending machine begins flashing a helpful “Out of Service” message, and provides me with a 1-800 number to call for a refund.  I wonder about robotic systems doing more sensitive tasks - like car welding or space shuttle repairing or brain surgery, and head back to the United ticket counter.

No real progress has been made.  It looks like the current plan is to overbook our original flight from Oakland to Denver, and bump some unlucky people who haven’t been screwed by an airline (yet) today.  So, we’re guaranteed seats on an already overbooked flight, then we get to head to Denver (maybe), and then we get to hopefully make our 40 minute connection for the Calgary flight.  Then there’s the specter of arriving in Calgary, having to head to customs, and knowing that we will have to declare the wine, pay the duty, and hope that we can clear customs and declarations in a reasonable time.

The lady at the ticket counter did a fine job, and even gave us $150 ticket vouchers for our “next” flight on United.  I didn’t tell her that this was a useless gift, as I don’t fly United (these tickets were booked by the people hosting my lectures), and my current experience made it extremely unlikely that I was about to start.

And here we sit - by gate 11 at the Oakland Airport.  My laptop battery runs low, we’re still 2 hours away from our “potential” boarding time for our overbooked first leg to Denver, and thank god we have great neighbors who are taking care of the dogs and don’t care that we’re delayed.  I know if we never make it home, the dogs will be in good hands.

It comes to this.

For the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.

When battling this type of zombie, you are basically trying to stay alive and get to a place of safety, as there are likely to be far too many for you to defeat them.

One tempting option is to go out there with a flamethrower. Zombies may have a natural aversion to fire, you should be able to ignite several of them with one burst, and it looks spectacular – there’s a video of a demonstration here. However, if you check the specifications it has some serious drawbacks. The U.S. Army’s M2-2 flamethrower weighed about seventy pounds, and is effective out to around fifty yards, but the big limitation is ammunition:

a fuel tank holding 18 liters of gasoline, enough for approximately five bursts of two seconds each.

So you’re probably better off with a conventional firearm. At least this is one area where we are spared the interminable debate of 9mm v .45 handguns and 5.56mm v 7.62mm. Unlike living humans, stopping power counts for nothing as far as zombies go; it’s all about shot placement. (And reliability – take at least one back-up gun in case you get a jam or run out of ammo at a bad time.) Anything larger than a .22 will do the job, so long as you’re capable of putting a round squarely though the head. And this is very much harder than you think.

I mean, you just don’t come across practical advice like that every day.  I’m sure most of us would have reached for the flamethrower.  And 10 seconds later = EPIC FAIL.

This has been an Expat Texan Public Service Announcement.  You’re Welcome.