A few years ago, while living in Tahoe, Mark and I flew to New York for Christmas. It was a standard visit. Then it came time to leave. I remember being stressed (shock!) because I knew it would be crowded at the airport and we hit the road way later than I had wanted to because my parents, who never fly anywhere, started getting ready to take us at the time that we should have been getting on the highway. They don't really get that during the holidays if your flight is at 8am you don't get there at 7:45am (or anytime you fly, but you get the idea). So I was worried.
So we're standing on this line at United Airlines and it's loooooong. And I'm sad to leave because it was my first time back visiting after my time in Tahoe became more 'permanent' therefore the mood is grim already. So as the line crawls forward they keep calling people forward who may be on the back of the line but whose flights are really soon. "If anyone is on the 8am flight to San Francisco please step to the front of the line" and so on, like that. Only after awhile Mark and I start to wonder why our flight is not getting called since we're eeking closer and closer to departure time. But we don't do much about it.
FINALLY, we get to the front, to the self-check-in kiosk, which is all most airlines have now, and it won't find our flight info, and it won't find our info, again and again. So we call for help and tell the woman it's not coming up, she asks for our paperwork and I hand it to her. And in very-loud-not-so-nice-customer-service-because-this-is-NYC form she goes "Your paperwork says your flight is on American Airlines. Welcome to United!" and she waves her arms all Vanna White style along the big letters on the wall.
Jaws drop and so does my stomach and the tears are immediate. I couldn't believe it but there it was. So basically after realizing that my father would be mean and tease me about it for the rest of my life I announced that I didn't think it was fair that I be the only one to handle all the travel arrangements as it was very stressful. So I retired from it.
So here we are in Tahoe. Mark has done all the arranging. We had epic layovers on the way out here. I couldn't believe it and I wondered if that would have been the case if maybe "someone else" had taken care of the trip. But whatever- we got here and had fun and we were preparing to have a great, laid-back last day at Fallen Leaf Lake when Mark's cell phone rings and it's his dad asking where the heck we were? What'd'ya mean? He was at the airport in San Diego waiting for us to come out of the terminal because we should've been on a plane the whole morning we were lounging at a breakfast place and planning our outing.
Basically Mark got the days mixed up and we missed our flight. And in true Tahoe form we only had one last shuttle to Reno to catch before it shut down and we were stranded with no way to get to the airport even though it was early afternoon. So we had to scramble to pack, call our host to let him know what had happened and luckily he let us use his truck (which by some miracle we actually had available to us today) to drive ourselves to the other side of town. So now we're sitting in the Reno airport...for hours...before we can fly to LAX where we wait...for hours...before we can fly into San Diego at 11 at night when we should have been there at like 11 in the morning.
Even though I'm glad we were able to get here and all will work out, the 2 hours where our travel world was thrown upside down really frazzled me and now I'm an anxiety mess. Which is a total bummer because Tahoe had me in a total zen. So...San Diego, your challenge is to return me to that vacation mode. GOOD LUCK.
1 comment:
ah Jamie, you crack me up! you have to love travel mayhem. I had my own freak out moment in June on our way back from Belize when we got to the tiny airport and realized there was no more room on the last airplane off the island and back to the mainland to catch our flight back to the states because Tropical Storm Alex decided to make his presence known at that exact moment! Just picture, me freaking out at the poor attendant because we had reservations, they just decided not to honor them because they had booked more people onto the flight, and basically, too bad for us! All turned out well as we then had to call Continental and tell them we would not be on our flight and could we please change it...two extra days in paradise, no need to freak out :)
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