My day began at 3:00am. I had turned the lights out between 11:45 and midnight. Three hours is more sleep than I expected to get.

My scheduled Lyft arrived exactly on time at 3:40 and dropped me at PDX at 3:58, probably the earliest I’ve ever been there. I hadn’t been able to check in with Alaska online, probably because I needed to show my passport for the connecting flight. As I checked my bag, I looked at the scale reading as I always do out of curiosity. Typically, I bring about 35 pounds. Today, my suitcase weighed in at 44.6. For my return, I would need to be cautious about new purchases that would tip that over 50 (or just pay the damn fee, I guess).

When I booked my itinerary through my company’s travel agency, they told me I would need to pick up my bag in L.A. and go through security again to begin my Singapore journey. The Alaska counter attendant, however, was able to check my bag all the way through. I would just need to pick up my boarding pass at the Singapore gate in L.A. Sweet!

TSA Pre-Check wasn’t available at security to the A/B/C gates, and the plebeian line (yeah, I said it) was significant enough that I walked the thoroughfare of shops over to D/E security, where the Pre-Check line may actually have been slower than the standard entry.

My flight was leaving from a B gate, so if I’d gone through security on the other side, I don’t know if I would have walked all the way over here, but since I had already, I made my way to the current end of the E gates, which are being expanded and in front of the wall separating the existing final gate and the construction is a section of PDX’s iconic old carpet. I took my send-off photo for Instagram and made my way over to B.

I paused in the airside thoroughfare between the terminals to drop to the floor and do some back extension press-ups. Any opportunity to do that on this very long day of sitting was one I should take.

One of my primary motivations to apply for and receive the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card was for its Priority Pass membership, allowing access to airport lounges around the world. I used it almost immediately, arriving ridiculously early for a flight to California in April, specifically so I could check out the Alaska lounge at PDX. As lounges go, it’s a modest affair, and I LOVED IT. Free food and coffee and, unexpectedly, no-paywall access to digital New York Times articles. Cool. When I flew in July and August, however, the lounge was closed to Priority Pass members due to capacity. Harumph. Unexpected and not cool.

At 4:45, I realized my 5:20 flight was about to board, but I headed for the lounge anyway and found it just opening. I used my access just because I could. I had the women’s restroom all to myself, and I grabbed a hard-boiled egg on my way out.

I had missed my boarding group but still had plenty of overhead bin space for my backpack and laptop bag. Again, knowing it was going to be a very long day of sitting, I gave my newly-strengthened-by-physical-therapy-but-always-vulnerable-to-extreme-conditions lumbar back every fighting chance I could to remain healthy by upgrading to a premium seat on this 2.5 hour flight to L.A. This gave me not only lots of legroom but also the ability to order a mimosa when service came around. My seatmate: “Did you say mimosa? I’ll have one of those too.” Me: “I know it’s really early…” She: “Well, it’s almost light out.” Flight attendant: “I’m not judging.”

I arrived in L.A. a bit before 8:00, over 3 hours before departure of my connecting flight to Singapore. I looked forward to relaxing and stretching in a lounge. Little did I know the lounge-related travel fuckery I was about to embark on.

In advance, I had checked lounge access at LAX and found that some had limited hours for Priority Pass members, e.g. not available until 11:00 or 13:00, but some were available nearly 24 hours. At the time, I didn’t know which terminal I would land in, so the first mistake I made was in not checking the app again as soon as I arrived.

I thought my first order of business should be securing my boarding pass for Singapore. Likely, there wouldn’t be a gate attendant available yet, but I wanted to figure out where I was supposed to be eventually and I thought maybe I could hit a lounge once there.

I didn’t know it was going to be a 25-minute walk from Terminal 6 where I’d landed to Terminal B for international flights. Along the way, I passed billboards and digital signs from a campaign called #WhyWeRise with messages like, “Your feelings are also your superpowers,” and “Everyone’s going through something.” Well, that’s nice. When I arrived in Terminal B, the combined straps of my shoulder bag and backpack were digging into my shoulders, and my toes were blistered inside my compression socks. And the wing of gates where my flight would depart was entirely deserted.

Now I checked the Priority Pass app again and found that: 1) Terminal B has two lounges, the ones I’d seen before that are available at 11:00 and 13:00. Fuck. 2) Terminal 6 has an available Alaska lounge near Gate 64, about two gates away from where I’d landed. Fuuuuuuck. OK, so I’ll head back to Terminal 6 to wait it out.

There were signs for a shuttle to Gates 21 to 39, so I thought that would perhaps get me closer to Gate 64 than walking back the way I’d come. As I approached the doors to the shuttle outside, some airport staff asked me whether I needed to go to Terminal 2 or 3. My second mistake was in not simply saying, “I’m trying to get back to Terminal 6.” Instead, I explained I was trying to follow the sign that said I could get to the 21 to 39 gates without saying why. I was sleep-deprived and frustrated and not communicating well, so after some back-and-forth, they gave up on getting a definitive answer out of me. I got on the shuttle with some folks who were all getting out at Terminal 2, as did I.

Where I learned that you cannot simply walk to the higher gates. There is no access to Terminals 4, 5, and 6 from Terminals 2 and 3. I had to get back on the shuttle to Terminal B and walk back the long way after all. And there was a line for the shuttle.

(It occurs to me for the first time as I write this that I could have changed gears and accessed an available lounge in Terminal 2. I don’t even know how to count this among my enumerated errors. As will be revealed below, this likely would have been a bust anyway.)

It was about 9:10 when I arrived back at Terminal B, two hours before departure and still no gate attendant in sight. My third mistake was not to wait there and get my boarding pass as soon as it was available. My stubborn pursuit of lounge access would not be thwarted.

I walked all the way back to Terminal 6 and what did I find in front of the elevator to the Alaska lounge but the all-too-familiar sign informing me that Priority Pass members are restricted due to capacity.

I decided, fuck it, I’m going to try to get in anyway. I took the elevator up and asked the counter agents if they thought Priority Pass access might be opened in the next hour or so. To my wondrous surprise, they said they were already allowing some in now. Victory!

I showed my digital membership card, and then the agent asked for my boarding pass. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both. For my 5-minute lounge visit at PDX, I had been required to show my membership and my boarding pass, and I had already forgotten I would need this before I could visit any of the lounges I desperately sought access to.

It also seemed from my conversation with the counter agent like I needed an Alaska boarding pass and maybe my boarding pass for a Singapore flight wouldn’t have allowed me in anyway. I’m not sure that was actually the case and I don’t think that’s true in other lounges.

In any regard, I wasn’t getting in. Compounding my frustration was my shame at being frustrated over lack of access to something that is such a privilege in the first place.

Now there was nowhere to go but back to my gate in Terminal B. It occurred to me that I was in danger of passing my entire layover without getting any food. I arrived near my gate as my name was being announced overhead. They wanted to give me my boarding pass as much as I wanted to receive it.

Boarding pass in hand at 10:00, I actually asked the gate attendant if I had time to go back to Terminal 6. She looked at me extremely doubtfully, and my stubborn resolve dissolved. I got a mushroom and cheese brioche and some coffee and sat at my gate to await boarding. I took another opportunity to get on the floor for some back extension press-ups while an alarm of some kind blared outside for several minutes with seemingly no one feeling the need to stop it. My layover experience may have made me cranky.

At the gate, we boarded shuttles to the plane. I got settled in my Premium Economy seat with its luxurious 38-inch pitch. The pilot announced that sky conditions had reduced our 17h flight to 15h20min. I’ll take it.

For my first entertainment, I chose the 3-hour movie Avengers: Endgame. Between meal service and standing breaks, this easily passed the first 5 hours. I moved on to TV episodes I’d saved on my laptop: two episodes of the half-hour comedy A Black Lady Sketch Show, two one-hour episodes of Perpetual Grace Ltd, and one hour of Succession. I switched back to onboard entertainment and began the 5-hour HBO miniseries Chernobyl.

Somewhere in the 12th hour of flying, despite my many standing breaks, my body had had enough sitting and I could no longer get comfortable. I could only grimace and bear it for another 4 hours. As we landed, I’d watched all but the last 12 minutes of Chernobyl, which was very, very good. I was grateful for all of the guilt-free binge-watching that passed the many hours.

to be continued in the next post