Airport rant

I'm enroute to Greenland at the moment, and things are going pretty much like they usually do. This time my luggage is sitting in JFK airport and I'm in Albany, NY. I don't know what my problem is, but it seems that every trip I take involves some unforeseen delay. Inari is losing desire to travel with me for fear of spending nights at airports, which we've done once before.

Anyway, if my luggage doesn't arrive tonight, as they promised it would, I'm really going to be in a pickle. My flight to Greenland leaves super early tomorrow morning and the next flight isn't until 4 May. I suppose I could manage without those packs until then - it wouldn't be ideal - but I could manage. If they end up being lost, however... Wow, that would pretty much ruin the field season. I must have several thousand dollars of equipment in those packs plus some pretty crucial instrument download cables. Keeping my fingers crossed. There must be a lesson in all this.

On a related note, I've come to loathe people who design airports. At least American airports. Or at least the people that decide to make it extremely difficult for newcomers to find information and get around. Why aren't there more maps and information desks? Why is it that at some airports flight information screens only contain information for one airline? Why did I have to leave security at JFK to transfer from one regularly-scheduled domestic flight to another? I really don't understand the rationale.

Three most hated airports so far:
1. Los Angeles
2. New York - JFK
3. Chicago O'Hare

Hmm.. I see a trend. Maybe I've just become too comfortable with our 6 gate, 2 baggage carousel airport in Fairbanks and the even smaller airport in Ilulissat. At Ilulissat you can walk in the airport and straight up to the tower. There you can ask them to open the door to get to the runway and hangars, and they'll do it without hardly caring what you're up to.