The Twin Cities airport pick-up loop

I was meeting Dad and Patricia in the Twin Cities. Their plane was due to land a little before 8.15pm. I decided to aim for an 8:25pm arrival just in case they made a quick exit or an early flight, figuring that even if they were really early I was only five minutes away at the Mall of America ... well, five minutes once I'd made the 25 minute walk to the Puff Lite.

First I had to figure out at which of the two Minneapolis-St Paul airports they were going to land. This place is crazy ... they even have twin airports. I went into a cafe with a wireless Internet hotspot, thinking that Google would surely be able to steer me right. First, I had to purchase a block of time online with a credit card. No problem.

Oh no, wait. That is a problem. I don't know why this is so common, but it is often impossible to shop on US sites with an Australian credit card, even ones that offer Australia on their drop down address menu. When I was booking my flights for Panama I discovered that American Airlines, incredibly, couldn't even take my card over the phone. Hoping that a tech savvy Wi-Fi company would fare better I phoned their 1-800 number. I then spent 10 minutes trying to negotiate their menu system, only to be informed at the end of the menus that they are experiencing technical difficulties and are unable to help at this time. Please call again later.

I gave up on them and used my phone-a-friend option. Marcus, wonderful IT Knight-in-Shining-Armour that he is, was able to promptly decipher which airport I wanted, and set up a Wi-Fi account on my behalf. What a legend.

Having arrived at the correct terminal at 8:26pm I started slowly making the endless loop around the pick-up/drop-off zone. About ten minutes and five laps later Dad called to report that they were on the ground, but nowhere near the front door.

I looped on for another half hour and 15 laps or so until he called again. Having packed them and their luggage into the surprisingly spacious Puff Life I drove out again, heroically resisting the hypnotic temptation to go around the loop just one more time.