Day 117, Saturday, December 3, Airport, One last obstacle, courtesy of Delta Airlines
Just when I thought that I had encountered the last pesky obstacle tossed my way, another one appeared.
As readers of this blog know, once I made my decision to fly home, I immediately contacted Delta Airlines, the only carrier flying non-stop from Salt Lake City to Washington, to inquire about the details of transporting Donner to DC. The Delta rep on the phone, whom I have since affectionately referred to as the "schoolmarm", sternly warned me that Donner's kennel must have metal and not plastic clips and be large enough for him to lie down comfortably, turn around and stand up without his ears touching the roof, but she did not tell me it could only have one door. When I expressed concern that I might have to show up with a (30") kennel where the tips of his ears slightly touched the roof, she warned me that he would be rejected and advised me to look harder to find an appropriately sized kennel. As I reported earlier on this blog, the next day I decided to buy the only 30" kennel I could find in the area --- with two doors ---- anyway instead of the 36" one and take my chances of a more reasonable agent at the cargo check-in. (If I had known about the one-door requirement, I would have found one.) If the kennel was rejected by Delta Cargo, my fallback was to get back in the rental car and drive home, which I had already worked out with the cooperative and competent Enterprise Car rental agent (Evan) in Richfield, Utah.
Because of the risks involved, I do not undertake critical steps on these trips unless I prepare for them. In some cases, that preparation includes a dry run. And so it came to be that on Friday, I left Salina early enough to arrive in Salt Lake City in time to go through a dry run at Delta Cargo with Donner instead of just showing up on Saturday only to learn that for one schoolmarmish reason or another he would not be able to fly. Well, as it turned out, the cargo manager was not so concerned about the 30" kennel but that the kennel had two doors, something the schoolmarm never told me about. Sorry, he told me, no two-door kennels allowed. (Why Pet Lodge, the manufacture of the kennel, says that their kennels are IATA approved, or why the schoolmarm never told me that, or why they could not just stay-tie that second door securely as they do with the main door, I do not know.) When I expressed exasperation to the manager that the Delta rep on the phone never told me about that and that I was in no position to go find a suitable kennel at the late hour, he told me not to worry, Delta has a supply of kennels that they could sell me, $170 for a 30" one and $270 for a 36" one, also something the schoolmarm never told me. I told the manager that I preferred the 30" one because of the bulky size of the 36" inch kennel and he said he would set up one of each and we could decide on the appropriate one in the morning. I asked him to please make notes for the morning manager about our decision, had he promised he would. After I left Delta, since the 30" Pet Lodge kennel with two doors was now useless to me, I drove to a local the Human Society and donated that kennel to them.
I showed up at Delta Cargo at promptly as soon as they opened at 6:45 to make sure no further obstacles were waiting for me there. It's a good thing I did. When I asked Crystal, the morning manager, if the afternoon manger had left notes for her, she said he had not. When she asked me where my dog's kennel was, in told her there were two that the afternoon manager has set up waiting for me to choose from. She looked puzzled and then disappeared for a few minutes. When she returned, she told me they not only had no such kennels for me, but had no kennels that size at all. When I asked her what I should do, she told me that that was my problem to solve and that my dog would not fly on the flight without a kennel.
I will not recite the details of what transpired over the next several minutes, but, in summary, I politely told Crystal that it was not my problem but hers to solve and that I and my dog would be on the 9:45 flight. But I also told her that the afternoon manager would not have told me that they had a 30" and 36" inch kennel if they did not. She answered that someone probably showed up after I left and bought them. Dismissing her response as improbable, I "urged" her to keep looking for the kennels as I was confident they were somewhere in the cargo warehouse.
After several minutes, Crystal returned and told me that they found the two kennels, but the 30" one was broken in half. Not wanting Donner to fly in such a large kennel, I asked if the 30" kennel could be repaired and she said no. Reluctantly, especially since at this point my options and time were running out, I agreed to buy the 36" kennel but only at the price of the 30" kennel since that is what I wanted and had been promised, and she agreed. I then proceeded to the loading dock, helped get Donner into his mobile mansion, and said my goodbyes to him, confident that I had just solved my last challenge of this journey.
After dropping off the Enterprise rental car, checking in with the affable Terry for my flight, and sailing thru TSA's pre-check without much difficulty (sadly, they did confiscate my solitary can of Starbucks Double-shot Mexican Mocha coffee that I absent-mindedly left in my backpack), I made a dash for the boarding gate. While waiting for boarding, I spotted the captain and introduced myself, telling him that I had a dog in the cargo hold so to please to make sure he keep he temperature up, although was certified for temperatures as low as 11 degrees, hoping he would keep them higher than that. He assured me that they would keep the cargo hold at 66. When I returned to my seat in the waiting area, while chatting with the woman next to me about my conversation with the captain, I jokingly told her that I expressed hope to the captain that he would not have to announce during the flight for the owner of the German shepherd dog to go to the cargo hold as he had escaped for his kennel, just as the purser of the Alaskan ferry had done twice on this trip.
After boarding the flight, settling into my seat, and striking up a conversation with the most interesting person I have even sat next to on a flight, a genuine cowboy from Montana named Chris Christensen, just as the doors of the Boeing 737 were closed and the flight ready to depart, the captain came on the loud speaker and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have a slight problem we must tend to which will delay us for about 10 minutes. Would the owner of the German shepherd dog in the cargo hold please identify himself and come forward?" I cannot now recall what was going through my mind at that point, but I immediately unbuckled my seat belt and rushed to the cockpit. There, the chief steward and captain explained to me to me that Donner's kennel would not fit through the cargo hold door so that would have to remove him from the kennel and try to fit it sideways through the door, but they did not know if it would fit that way either. I turned to the chief steward and told him that I needed to take this flight and that I hoped that he believed the same thing I did, that there was a solution for every problem. He told me he did and assured me that if the kennel did not fit, with the captain's approval, he would permit my dog to ride in the cabin with me. The captain agreed.
After the cabin door was reopened, I was escorted down the ladder to the tarmac and for the next ten minutes poor Donner went through what had to be the most traumatic experience of this trip, if not his life. After freeing Donner from his kennel, it took several cargo workers to flip the kennel on its side and squeeze it though the cargo hold door and then flip it upright inside the hold. After it was in place inside, let me just say that it was not an easy chore to get a scared 101-pound dog onto the four-foot high conveyer belt, guide him along the narrow 15-foot conveyor up to and into the hold, and then secure him in his kennel, but we did it, and the flight got underway soon after that without further Donner incidents.
Three and a half hours later, after the plane landed in DC, I had to return to the tarmac and reverse the task of getting Donner and his kennel back onto the tarmac. The Delta staff who assisted in the process, especially the likeable Julia Oggiono, could not have been more cooperative and understanding, and after some difficulty, including Donner's frantically running free in the cargo hold looking for me, he was eventually on the tarmac and put back into this kennel for delivery to the baggage claim area. After I claimed Donner, Julia apologized and handed me a credit for $50 for the "inconvenience" both he and I had suffered. Minutes later, Donner and I were met by my "home-base commander", Mike Boyd, at the pickup area, and driven home safely without further incident. The final obstacle in the way of our returning home safely was over.
This entire upsetting incident could have been easily avoided by, at a minimum, the schoolmarm telling me that two-door kennels, even IATA-certified ones, were not permitted by Delta. I would clearly have respected that and driven out of my way to find a conforming kennel. As the result, I not only was out the $170 I paid for the two-door kennel, but Donner was subjected to a trauma the likes of which he had never experienced before, and I was subjected to still another stress-accompanied incident on this obstacle-laden journey. Fortunately, thanks to the flight's captain and chief steward, and Delta's ground crews at both airports, not to mention my determination, the incident ended well, and Donner arrived home with me and safely, and another challenge tossed our way on this extraordinary journey was resolved.
I will try to post my final blog entry on Monday.
Photos include:
The announcement of the delay on the flight's web-site page.
Donner and I arriving in our driveway and then getting ready to finally get home after ab absence of 117 days and nights. (Note that I was so distracted by the tarmac incident that I forgot to return the safety vest they gave me to step on the tarmac.)
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