Night-out at the airport

So my journey to Charlottetown begins at Atlanta airport in a somewhat unusual way; with a night-out at the Atlanta airport. Why? Because my flight departs at 7 am and I can’t find anyone willing to wake up at 4 am to drop me off at the airport. So after dropping some of my worldly belongings at my friends place for safekeeping, off I go to the MARTA station at 12 am. Now walking to the North Avenue MARTA station at midnight is enough to give anyone goose bumps. With vagrants hanging around at all the street corners on the way to the train station, it is hard to be calm and composed while walking to the station with 2 suitcases and a backpack. Anyway when my friend walked me to the station and left me there, I tried hard to remember the route back to his house, in case I needed to, you know, rush back. Luckily for me I found a cop (with a revolver) keeping a watch at the train station which gave me confidence. So after waiting for the train for 20 minutes (MARTA doesn’t seem to adhere to schedules during night, for some good reason, I presume), I finally stepped into a more-than-half-empty train carriage for the airport. Nothing interesting (thankfully!) happened on the way and I reached there well in time at around 1 am.

Now, all counters for Delta are closed at night, except for one, where all people seem to crowd. I didn’t have any success at the self-checkin counters (which apparently work for domestic flights only) so decided to stand in a line for checkin which was (suspiciously) at a counter called ‘Ticketing’. Well, since I had nothing better to do anyway for the next 5 hours so standing in the line with 20-odd people seemed like a pretty decent thing to do. After an hour of waiting, when I tried to checkin, I got a response that checkin for checkin luggage would start at 4 am. Oh well, standing in line had provided me with a nice way to keep busy (and not fall asleep) so the wait for the next hour wasn’t that boring. And anyway, my mom called me every few minutes so which provided me with a neat distraction.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful except for a seemingly-random check by the TSA and another in Canada by their Border Protection Police. Two checks by two different countries in a single day doesn’t seem all that improbable anymore now. So am there and waiting for access to a working Internet connection to post this entry…