Above: Kiawah Island
Below: View from the restaurant The Wreck
One of the great joys of flying as a stand by non-revenue passenger is being forgotten. It is a lesson I should’ve learned much earlier but being forgotten seems to take me by surprise every time; every time those gate agents forget to give me a seat before they shut the door. I finally learned my lesson coming home from South Carolina after a lovely 4th of July weekend spent celebrating in Charleston and Kiawah Island. It was one of those days where the only thing I could hear all day was my bed calling, no screaming my name. By this point I had only been home for a little over a week since May 16th so, not complaining, but like I said I was ready for MY bed.
Dock in Charleston Battery Street
Things go perfectly in Charleston and I am headed to Detroit for a short layover until my flight to Flint where my little sister was waiting to pick me up. I am watching on my computer as the flight becomes over booked and I feel the frustration building as I realize the next flight to Flint is at 10:30 pm and it is 4:30 pm right now. But I’m also very thankful for all the things I get to do so I quickly stop being negative and think if I don’t get on it will be fine and I’ll just re-read my book.
The door closes so I walk up to the gate agent and ask if they will put my name on the list for the next flight. He looks at me and asks my name and I give it to him and this is where the story goes south, not good south like South Carolina, but bad south like the tears are brewing and ready to spill over. He says “Why didn’t you come up earlier, there were four seats open on this flight?” I say, “I was here the whole time and it’s your job to call me up and give me a seat!” Being the least emotional of the three Colt siblings I found it shocking when I was getting very angry at this man and am talking as if I was bawling my eyes but no actual tears were coming out, so basically I just sounded like a lunatic. But in my defense all he kept saying was “you could’ve gotten on, you could’ve gotten on.” I finally screamed at him “stop saying that because I didn’t get on so it doesn’t make me feel better to know that I could have.”
So I found myself with five and half hours to kill in the Detroit airport and feeling incredibly sorry for myself, so of course I decided I was going to go eat some pity food. So here is my advice part of this post. If you find yourself looking for food in DTW go to the area where the signs tell you to go for baggage claim. As your walking that way will see a duty free store on your right, then right after that an inlet with a Starbucks, Burger King, and the hidden gem Musashi. It is a Japanese cuisine restaurant that is better than fast food. I always end up getting Burger King or Wendy’s in the airport and feel awful about it, but this is good airport food. It is a little expensive but like I said before it’s airport food.
I got on the 10:30 pm flight and was never so nervous about missing my name being called. So lesson learned- I will be going up to the gate agent and bugging them every time they say final boarding call!
If you want any suggestions on where to eat in any other airport let me know!
Follow me on Twitter @coltkels
Hey I’ll keep the DTW eating place in mind next time I’m there!