Escape from Orlando

On Wednesday morning, we enjoyed a too-leisurely breakfast at Bob Evans, a treat not afforded to those who make their abode on Long Island. The flight was scheduled for 1 PM. Plenty of time to finish up those delicious buttermilk biscuits and then hit the road. The timeline begins.

11:25: Leave Bob Evans on Irlo Bronson Hwy. Irlo Bronson was famous for his work in the movie "Brunchwish." The road may be the ugliest stretch in the whole wide world.
11:30: Gas up, hit I-4.
11:45: Still on I-4. Reason: Jerks.
12:00: On Beeline, which has been renamed Beachline only to piss me off, and only in some parts.
12:10: Drop car at Hertz. The driver claims that he's never taken an express drop-off envelope before.
12:15: At the JetBlue terminal with plenty of time to spare!12:20: The self-serve kiosk spits out boarding passes, without bag tags. We have to go to the customer service line. The
signs say that the 1:00 PM flight is boarding.
12:30: Still in the customer service line. Two positions are open. One is taken by a family of 439 who are having two coolers of foil-wrapped, frozen meat inspected by hand. The second is taken by a mother and daughter who are engaged in friendly banter with a dummy of a clerk.
12:35: Having run out of banter, the dummy of a clerk gets to us. I explain quickly what happened with the kiosk and he tries to slow me down so that he can relax a bit. He takes what seems like forever, and when I remind him that our plane is leaving in 20 minutes, he says "Don't worry, you'll make it." Let's face it - I already know that the guy is a lying fuck.
12:40: The bags are dropped at the big scanning machine. We hit the security line. Our flight is leaving in 15 minutes, and the sign says that the current wait is 20 to 30 minutes. A TSA employee is performing the valuable job of pointing people into lines. I tell her that we have to get through so we don't miss our flight. She replies with the TSA equivalent of "tough shittles." We can't go through the wheelchair line. We can't go through the express line. (Interesting fact: the TSA lets first-class passengers use a faster line. Because safety sometimes has to take a back seat to the convenience of the wealthy.)
12:50: I have to be restrained from going Bakersfield Chimp on a Southwest pilot who is carrying a bag with three pro-Bush stickers on it. Ask yourself: do you want a faith-based pilot on your next flight?
12:52: On the monorail. The safe, efficient, slow monorail.
12:56: The monorail doors open. I tear over to Gate 101. The plane doors are closed. They won't seat us, but our bags are on the flight. Instead, we're put on standby on the 1:30 PM flight.

So who's to blame here? My finger points squarely at the Meat Family Robinson.

We get to JFK, and it actually works out well. The bags are already on the carousel, having caught the 1:00 PM flight. Three of the four bags, that is. The fourth is nowhere to be found. I go to Baggage Services. Confused by my story, they won't check on where the fourth bag is but tell me to go wait at the carousel for the earlier flight. I told them that I had just done that, and three bags of four had come off. They said "well, the carousel is still going, right? That means that more bags are coming." Yes they are, but all from Buffalo.

I go to the carousel for the 1:30 flight. No bag. Everyone else gets their bag, but mine is nowhere to be seen. I go back to Baggage Services. NOW they check on the claim number and discover that there's a note in the system. Three of four bags were sent along. The fourth didn't make the flight because the scanner was acting up. Oddly, all the bags made the 1:30 flight despite this scanner problem. My bag is on a later flight, and they'll deliver it to our house. I don't understand why they can't tell you, WHEN YOU'RE ON THE PLANE, that your bag didn't make the flight. They have it in their system, it has to be completely possible to do this when you're deplaning, and it would save me and them a lot of time.

All because of the foil-wrapped meat. Foil-wrapped meat sucks.