The Odyssey
Was I in purgatory? It was two o'clock in the morning, and I was freezing my ass off on the cold, hard tile in the baggage claim area of DFW International Airport.

I'd been flying since Saturday -- 12 hours from Shanghai to Chicago, then an abhorrently long delay in Chicago forced me to miss my Dallas connection to get home to Austin. American Airlines (my #2 nemesis behind Sprint) could only put me on a Monday morning flight home at 9:30am.

I was supposed to be home already. My tickets had me back in Austin on Sunday night at 11pm.

Wanting to better control my fate, I decided to abandon my luggage (which was booked for the morning flight) and attempt to drive home from Dallas in the middle of the night. After standing in four lines, four different car rentals told me no, they didn't have cars available that I could take just one-way.

So I returned to the original option of getting a hotel room courtesy of AA and staying until the morning. But the original option vanished with the AA agents who had gone for the night. No hotel voucher for me.

Which brings me to purgatory. Couldn't go into the warm terminal where there were seats and vending machines. That would require a boarding pass, and I was only standby for the morning. Couldn't go outside - there was no place to go.

The temperature in the baggage claim area dropped below sixty degrees and all I had was the latest Newsweek to keep me warm. (They aren't thick.)

The airport at 2am is a strange place. Four or five fellow interlopers were also attempting to keep warm or get some sleep, I observed one guy curl up in a wheelchair, another wrap his hood backward around his head. None of us spoke to each other.

I began searching for survival items, wandering behind ticket counters and TSA screening areas to find blankets or even consumable liquids. Eventually, my search through Terminal A led to two AA blankets that some security guards left at their chairs. They smelled like ass, but this was purgatory. I also got my paws on the DFW Employee newspaper, DFW People. The police blotter was interesting, detailing car burglaries in the parking lot and fights that broke out at the baggage claim.

Ultimately, I decided the conveyor belt in the corner would provide the softest surface on which to sleep, but the florescent lights and the loudspeaker's constant "DFW Airport forbids smoking" announcement pretty much shattered any chance to get some shuteye.

By four am, I was so desperate to get home I called AA crying and got myself confirmed on a flight out of a different Dallas airport. I traded forty dollars for a ride there and made it home this morning.

My bags? Still waiting...