The Gods Must Be Crazy

The Gods of standby travel were angry, it seems.  The flight that Tracy and Tyler were going to take from Calgary to Toronto had a broken toilet.  Due to government regulations, the plane had to go out with 40 empty seats, lest an unseemly line form at the only functioning crapper.  Of course, this meant no room for standby travellers, and a backlog of bumped passengers filling up the rest of Sunday’s flights.  They couldn’t make the connecting flight to Buenos Aires, and all seemed lost.  They did manage to get to Toronto the next day, but there isn’t a scheduled flight to BA on Mondays, so they spent the night in T.O.  Tuesday’s flight to BA was oversold, but they decided to try for it anyway.  The plane took off minutes ahead of a blizzard that forced the cancellation of over 300 flights, and my brother and his Special Lady Friend were on board!

Having spent thirteen years working for airlines and flying standby, I know the frustration and helplessness of watching an anticipated holiday crumble in front of your eyes.  I also know the elation of having certain disaster averted by those magic words over the airport P.A.: “Martin, party of two.”  I went to meet them at the airport, and we were all giddy at the prospect of five days of hangouts.  Wednesday night, we had some people over for roof dinner.  We spent Thursday touring San Telmo, hanging out in Plaza Dorrego, and napping.  We woke up from our naps at 11pm and headed out for a steak dinner and some bar hopping.  Friday, we went to the leather district in Villa Crespo (not what you think), and then hit up Palermo to watch the pigeon fights.  At night we went to a club in La Boca called Plasma, which was having a Johnny Cash tribute with local bands.  It was kind of weird; they mostly played covers of Rick Rubin era Cash, which meant we heard covers of Johnny Cash covers of Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, and Skip James.  There was a pretty nice echoing version of Ring of Fire in Spanish, though.  Today, we went to Recoleta Cemetery, and as we were walking to see the Big Metal Flower, we heard Vampire Weekend doing sound check for a show on the roof of the design mall later tonight.  Let’s go!