“Forty minutes minimum wait,” the woman behind the shuttle van counter said.
“No matter where I’m going?”
“Forty minutes minimum wait.”
I stood there as she watched me and the lady behind me waited.
“Ok,” I said. “I guess I’ll take the taxi.”
She waved outside and to the left.
The automatic doors opened for me and I turned left. As I passed the shuttle van stop, there were indeed people waiting. I kept walking.
Then I came to an empty bench with bright lights overhead. I stopped and looked up at the lights. I turned and looked at the waiting people. And then I went back into the airport to the woman behind the counter.
“I’ve got a book,” I said, “so I’ll just wait the forty minutes.”
She shrugged and rang up my credit card. “Talk to man outside.”
Outside, the man gave me a pager and said, “Come back and see me when this goes off.”
I sat on the bench with the bright lights and got out my book.
But just minutes after I sat down, after only one paragraph, a van drove up, and my pager went off. And the man behind the counter pointed to the van which was full of people with one free seat evidently waiting for me.
The driver took my suitcase and slid the door shut. He drove thru the airport gates and got on the freeway and began driving west as the sun went down. In a few minutes, he pulled up to the first stop on his route and dropped me off at my hotel. I was the only one to get out.
From the time that woman behind the counter told me it would be forty minutes minimum wait to when I was riding up the elevator to my room, a total of 20 minutes had elapsed.
I’m glad I didn’t take the taxi.