I took a lovely trip home to Georgia, in the brief time gap between my job with CREC in Arizona and my job with Mesa Verde in Colorado. After my Atlanta-to-Phoenix return flight, I had a small "airport dilemma."

This dilemma was fairly minor in the scheme of dilemmas. Nothing like some of my past airport experiences, which include: running to meet a connection on the other side of the airport; arriving for a late layover with a growling stomach, only to find all airport restaurants closed and all vending machines practically empty; and napping at 1 am on the Denver airport floor, resulting in neck and back pains that plagued me for several days.
[So far no cancelled or majorly delayed flights, no missed connections, no emergency landings... knock on wood...]

This dilemma was, in fact, comical. I walked out of a Phoenix Sky Harbor airport terminal. I found the pickup for the economy parking shuttle bus. I assumed I would hop aboard a bus with the same terminal number, bound for that terminal's economy parking lot. Surely that was where I had parked, in aisle D E, a week earlier. A bus arrived. "West Economy Parking." West economy parking? Wait... The driver's look confirmed my idiocy, when I asked how to know if I had parked in the West or the East lot. Because most airport visitors park in the West lot, the driver recommended riding his West Economy shuttle bus. He drove through the entire lot, and nothing looked familiar. Clearly I had parked in the East lot.

The driver probably felt sorry for me. It would take quite a while to get to my car, if I had to ride his bus back to the terminal and wait for the bus to the East parking lot. So when an airport van passed by, the bus driver motioned the van driver to stop. And yes, though slightly anxious, I hopped into a white 15-passenger van with a driver I did not know. Following a somewhat awkward and mostly silent ride, he dropped me off at my car, kindly wished me a good day, and drove away. And so concluded a humorous and educational airport dilemma.