Charlotte's Web

plane Charlotte, North Carolina: September 5, 2000

Ron was stuck in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport for a night on a leg of his Seattle, WA to Anchorage, AK flight in early September. "I can't believe they would delay a presidential candidate's plane...even for precautionary maintenance. I've got to campaign!" he was heard screaming to the airport's TCBY store attendant.

With the city's hotels filled for the weekend's tobacco-sponsored NASCAR event, Ron was, in his own words, "screwed". His staff needed beds. Ron needed a bed and a nightlight.

Heretofore unbeknownst to Ron, a small group of travelers bypass not only hotels but every other form of paid lodging. Their standard-bearer is Donna McSherry, who founded the Cheap Like Me Travel Society and operates a Web site called the Budget Traveller's Guide to Sleeping in Airports. The website ranks sleeping arrangements in airports all around the world. A kindly Hare Krishna gave Ron the URL and he and his crack staff gathered around his laptop screen to discover their fate.

Cheap Like Me website: "Charlotte was a pretty nice airport. It had these Quiet zones that had all the really comfy couches. The only problem was that the quiet zones were right in the middle of the lobby, so in the early morning, it started to get a little loud."

The staff all looked at each other with quizzical looks. "Well, it looks like we are destined for the lobby," said Ron to his staff. "Let's get moving."

The lobby proved to be exceedingly hard to locate, as Ron has no sense of geographical direction and his staff shows no sign of leadership qualities. After 4 hours, Shangri-la was discovered. With his staff spread out over the couches and X-Ray machines of the airport lobby, Ron settled in for a horrible 2-hours rest.

He awoke in such a pissy mood that he vowed never to visit North Carolina again. He said that "these toothless hicks should be able to better provide for a future President and his staff. This is intolerable!"

As a token of appeasement, he was allowed a complimentary breakfast burrito from the "Taco Tent" in the airport and boarded the plane for Alaska by 9:56 AM the next day.

Posted by Webmaster at September 5, 2000 07:13 PM

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