500 Letters: Airport Nice

It's hard to be nice at the airport. It was especially hard to be nice at the Dallas airport this weekend. DFW cancelled over 1000 flights due to weather this past weekend. People were angry, airline workers were frazzled and everyone looked like they could use a drink.

I was trying to get to Colorado Springs on Friday to visit a friend. I had a two hour delay Friday morning in Minneapolis for my flight to Dallas. Once I landed I learned that my flight to CS was cancelled. Got booked on a flight to Denver, that was delayed multiple times for approximately ten hours. We finally had wheels up at 11:30 p.m. We were supposed to have left at 2:45 p.m.

I finally made it to Denver at 12:30 a.m. MT, where my friend Addie was waiting for me since 5 p.m. She even got a little airport survival kit for me. I was pretty close to absolute delirium by that time.

I ended up having a fantastic Saturday bouncing around Colorado Springs with Addie. We ate delicious burritos, hiked around Garden of Gods, and saw Birdman. The stresses of the airport kind of faded away.

However, they returned back at the Dallas airport. My flight back to Minneapolis got delayed about two hours. I just wanted to get home, but I slowed down. I didn't furiously text all of my friends complaining. I just walked around and tried to calmly update my parents.

The weird thing is that a lot of people became more talkative during the airport stresses. I spoke with a Canadian documentary filmmaker, a finance guy from Kentucky who knew Rand Paul, a woman worrying about her three kids, an oil and gas consultant, a real estate finance guy, and a woman coming back from an epic bachelorette party. I liked listening.

It was very hard to be nice, but I dug in and tried to treat people how they were at the airport: stressed, tired, anxious, hungry people who just wanted to go home. I wasn't perfect by any means, but I felt a little less stressed on the way home. Our culture does not have to many shared experiences anymore, but I think terrible travel events are one of them.

Maybe if we are all just a bit nicer, acknowledge each others pains, and act like we give a damn, travel, and other things will be much less stressful.

Last postcard: 94 to Boston, Mass.
Reading: A Good Life By: Ben Bradlee
Listening: On Being Podcasts
Watching: House of Cards Season 3