Traveling Woes

This last week I went to Ohio for a family reunion (my Mother-in-Law’s side of the family). This trip turned out to be one of the best little vacations I have been on but it certainly had it’s share of terribleness.

Let me start from the beginning.

Day 1: We get up and head to Bart, which is a subway like train that takes us directly into the San Francisco airport. Because it takes a bit of time to get through the SFO airport, we leave a good 2.5 hours before our flight leaves to ensure we have enough time to get through.

On the way to SFO however, some protester decided to walk on the tracks and basically block all trains from going past a certain stop. Delay, delay, delay. We end up basically getting stuck in a traffic jam due to all the trains being turned around and show up to the airport 30 minutes before our flight leaves.

Unfortunately for us, the cut off for check in is 45 minutes. Dang!

So we try to fix it and arrange another flight. Problem is, I booked the tickets via Hotwire. The airline (United) actually brokered the flight through 2 different airlines or something.

We go talk to someone after waiting in an hour long line at United. They can’t help us. They tell us to go to this other airline because the flight was brokered through another airline.

So, we take the train to the next terminal and wait in another line. They send us to another airline. – Another hour wait. They cancel our tickets and offer us to rebuy tickets for another flight @ almost $600 per ticket for a 1 way flight. I said, no thanks.

Not knowing what to do, I head back to United and wait in another 1.5 hour line. By this time it’s almost 6+ hours in the airport and I wanted so much to go crazy. But my great wife helped me keep my sanity.

I go up just asking for any help and the nice lady simply says, ok… Changes the tickets to a red eye flight and that was it. Not sure why they didn’t do that the first time. This lady was great – wish I grabber her name.

Now, because the flight was later that night we wanted to go back home and relax until the flight. Unfortunately, the lady said we needed to wait another couple hours before we could check in. So we end up going to get coffee at one of the airport coffee places.

After a few hours had gone by, we went back to check in. Unfortunately we had to go through the special “something is wrong” line to check in – you know the one where they have 2 people working for a line of 30+ people. So after waiting in the line for what seemed like an eternity, we were checked in and had our tickets.

We couldn’t leave for home because by time we got home, we’d have about 30 minutes of time before we’d need to head right back. So we waited.

Finally we get on the plane. Phew, that was such a pain. Oh wait… delays. We get to our transfer flight in Chicago. Lightning storm delays. Bleh… haha.

During the flight, I try to sleep but this little kid next to me decided to sleep with his head on the arm rest. During his sleep he continued to push his head farther and farther into my stomach / chest making for a night long battle of me trying to push him away. I mean, he was like 5ish years old so I didn’t want to be mean but it really tested my patience. Haha.

Finally, we get to the Dayton airport and wait for our bags. Except, the bags never came. Ok great.

We head over to the assistance counter where we find 1 person working and a line of about 20 people.

After waiting for about an hour or longer, we finally fill out some paper work so the airport can deliver our bags to our hotel.

The bags don’t come until the next morning. Yup – 48 hours in the same clothes.

All of that aside, the trip was really great! Hahaha. I had a great time meeting my wife’s family, hanging out with my grandparents (who are also from the same area), and just enjoying the down time.

One last story:
When I finally got my bag, I was excited to hook my laptop back up so I could sneak some quick work in. Except… I couldn’t find the charger! Oh no. I had forgotten my charger. So I go the whole week without charging my laptop or using it.

When we are packing and getting ready to leave to go back home, I notice a pocket I forgot to check. Yup, I had the charger the ENTIRE trip and didn’t realize it. DOH!

Anyways traveling can suck but this trip made all that suckage worth it.

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