Okay, here goes. Great bus so far, but a nightmare of a trip so far. I have a friend take me to the MARTA station and an almost hour ride to the airport to get to my gate an hour early, only to find my plane is delayed a half hour. What will I do for an hour, play on the laptop. Look in my bag and the lap top is not there.I apparantlyleft it in one of the security bins. I think I have enough time to go back and get it, knowing I have about 1-1/2 hours till boarding. Keep in mind this is at Atlanta/Hartsfield Airport, the busiest airport in the world. After the long checkin process, you get on marta train that takes you about a mikes to the terminal. My terminal D1A, good, the first one in the terminal, D being the furthest terminal. Wrong, 18 terminals, D1A is the furthest one. I hate lugging my carryon with 2 shoulders that need replacing.
So off I go, back up the terminal, back through the TSA long line again and check my bags and go through xray and find the security to look for my lap top, they don't have it on the list. "are you sure you came through TSA and not Northside check in.?" Ah , no. So back out again, head to Northside checkin and go through the long lines again. For sure I'm about to miss my flight.TSA asks are my pockets empty. I reach and find the battery stick for my Vape pen. He says what's this. I tell him and he says I think this needs to go through xray. So he tosses it into a bin at the back of the line where I wait for 10 peoples bins to come through to get my battery. I then head to the security counter for my lap top. Agent asks what brand and what does it look like.I say a Black Lenovo. He goes to a bin with about 10 laptops, I'm not the only idiot, and find mine is the second one in the bin. I say "if you power it up the screen will have my name, and I showed him my DL. Fire it up, sees my name and insists I log on before he would release it to me, Really? That's my name right there, still insisted, so I do and off I go back to the train to my far away terminal to find the plane has not even arrived yet, We end up leaving an hour late. I have a 1 hour layover in Denver I will surely miss. Turns out the connection flight was the same plane and crew, just had us deplane so they could clean and reboard us. I chose a Hotel in Portland that had shuttle servicefrom the airport, 3 miles away. I specifically told them I would arrive after midnght ona 12:05 ETA. Thier shuttle quits at 1am, unbeknownst to me. I get out to the shuttle station to see my hotel not on the list, so I call the operator to find out aout shuttle to my hotel. They say they will call them and have them come for me, go stand out on island #1 and wait for it to arrive. Its after 12:30am and I'm standing in freezing Portland waiting on a ride. After half hour I call back and ask if they are coming for me? They say "No, they stopped service early tonight. Well what the **** am I suppose to do? We need to get you a Taxi. OKay, who's paying for that. Well you will. No Howard Johnsons will. I get in tha cab, I notice the meter starts at $6.50 and as we pull off it quickly goes to $6.60-$6.70, and he reaches up and turns the meter off. I really didn't think much of it at the time, just wanted a warm bed at that point. My bag is in the trunk, we get to the hotel, 3 miles away. What do I owe you? $40. $40, wtf , 3 miles? Wouldn't give me my bag till I paid. Made him right a receipt for the hotel to reimburse me. Get to the hotel and another couple there bitching about the same thing, they tell me the driver wasn't feeling good and went home before midnight. I called the cab company, asked how much it would cost to go 3 miles from the airport. They said about $25. I told them their driver was charging $40 and ripping you off by pocketing all the money and not registering it on the meter.
