...
In general, they say one should never write about one’s mistakes where the whole world can read about it. However, if I ever actually held to this unspoken rule, I would lose 90% of what makes up my blog. And that’d be kind of boring.
So in the interest of serving my friends and family and keeping us all entertained…I offer the following…
Every year my mission holds a conference in a different country for the team leaders of our various fields. Even though I technically lead no one (thanks Marcee) I still fall into the category of “Team Leader” and therefore as the leader of myself, I’m able to attend. I just never do, since I usually don’t have the funds. This year through the generosity of family and an anonymous donor, I was given the opportunity. It didn’t take too much to convince me since this year’s conference is in Turkey. Seriously…Turkey! Since Turkey is on my list of places to go before I die (I do actually have such a list), and since I’m not getting any younger (so they tell me) I figured this might be my only chance.
At this point I could write a number of other things to try and justify the trip, but I’ll just skip all that for the sake of brevity. If you want the list I’ve come up with, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get a copy. It’s extensive.
I booked my flights (which was complicated since I was trying to travel from South America to Turkey and, it seems, not very many people want to do that), and last Sunday headed for the airport with my bags packed and the guys in tow to say goodbye. I was more excited than I’ve been in quite some time. As you probably gathered in the last post, it’s been a rough few weeks here, and I was ready for a bit of adventure that didn’t involve me being dad to a dozen ex-street kids.
My excitement diminished significantly when the nice lady behind the counter informed me that I’d messed up and missed my flight. It’d been booked for the day before. All I can say at this point is that I have no idea what happened. When I book flights (which I’ve done a lot) I generally check the dates a hundred times before I make the final decision. As I said, this was a complicated flight to book and I’d looked at a lot of different flights. As well, South America uses a different set up for the calendar, and it may be that I got mixed up and thought I was clicking on Sunday, when in fact it was Saturday. In the end it doesn’t really matter what happened…what mattered was that I was without a ticket.
They also informed me that it would be in the range of $4000 to rebook my flights since I needed to travel the next day and that’s what the tickets were currently worth. That didn’t go over well in my head either.
So back home I went, and spent the next four hours on my computer trying to talk to talk to people to rebook my flights and hotels, etc. It didn’t help that the internet was ridiculously slow and I was only hearing every fourth word the other person was saying…which is why I ended up booking myself into a smoking room at the hotel in Miami, but that’s another story…
I finally decided to just figure it out myself. I ended up finding decent flights to Istanbul (not great, but not bad) and I was told that I could apply my lost ticket to future travel (the ticket agent was surprised by that since normally that’s not possible. For some reason I had a ticket that allowed me to use the credit in the future. So yea…thanks God…). In the end I felt like I wasn’t losing too much. Not $4000 anyhow…
Monday morning I was back at the airport ready to try again. I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous to travel! I just kept feeling like I was sure I’d missed something and would be told…again…that I wouldn’t be able to travel. But low and behold, the next thing I knew, I was on the plane and headed for Miami.
Miami night? Mostly uneventful. I ate at Subway and that made me very happy. I also got lost trying to find the hotel pool...it was very complicated. As I said, I had a smoking room but the smell wasn’t too bad and it was $10 cheaper than my original room…so bonus. My flight was at 11:00 AM so I set the hotel’s alarm clock, and to be doubly careful, I also asked for a 7:30 AM wake up call. No problem they assured me…
Imagine my surprise when I woke up, looked at the clock to see it read two minutes to nine! I had less than two hours until my flight LEFT. I went screaming out of the hotel (I threw my passkey at the front desk as I ran past) and hopped into the shuttle. He knew I was late and drove like a wild man to the airport. I ran inside…to see a huge lineup at the American check-in counter. I asked an American rep if there was anything I could do, and she said that since I was traveling internationally, I could do the self check-in thing. Self check-in? Nobody there! I was through in less than five minutes. Off to security…
…where there were at least 300 people in line. Now I knew I was in trouble. I asked another American rep if this was for sure the concourse I wanted (I didn’t have time to mess that up) and she told me that I could go through here, but if I went out the front doors of the airport, cut across the parking lot and went back in farther down the airport, I would end up closer to the concourse I wanted.
Great…off I went, running and dragging my luggage across the parking lot. I kind of crashed through the doors right in front of the security check point I needed. And guess what? There was ONE person in line. I was through security in less than three minutes and running for my gate. Although at this point I didn’t really need to run since I was now over an hour early. =)
From my bed to the gate? Less than 45 minutes…in the Miami airport no less. Of course it took me awhile to catch my breath and I was sweating like a pig, but still…less than 45 minutes!
Now that would be impressive enough, if the story ended there. But of course it doesn’t. My next destination was New York…
It was really fun flying into New York. We came in more or less over downtown, so I could see the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other famous sights. I had an aisle seat, so I had to look past the make-out couple beside me (I didn’t mention them, but suffice to say that before the flight even took off she had her legs overtop of his legs and they were…affectionate…the entire trip. Oh…and they were kind of old so it was sort of gross. No offense to older people…more power to you really…but not in the plane seat beside me for three hours).
Anyhow, we arrived eventually and I settled into my eight hour layover at the airport by looking for a McDonald’s. As I wandered away from the arrivals area, I suddenly had a thought…I wondered if my luggage was checked all the way through to London or if I had to pick it up. I asked one official looking guy and he assured me that it was, in fact, checked through to London. Then he hesitated and suggested that we talk to another lady with American. She looked at my ticket and said,
“Honey, (yea she called me Honey) you definitely need to pick up your luggage since you’re not leaving from this airport! You’re leaving from JFK!”
Of course I am.
So I hustled back to baggage claim…found my bag that was still happily going around in circles on the conveyor belt, and went looking for a bus to the John F. Kennedy airport.
Now that ride was kind of fun too. I didn’t see anything famous or anything, but there were lots of traffic signs to famous places…Brooklyn…Queens…Long Island. Places I’ve only read about or seen in movies. It’d be nice to go back some day and actually visit those places, of course, but I was still rather entertained by seeing the names. As was the lady in front of me it seemed. She took pictures of everything. That’s fine I guess, but I’d hate to be her family and have to look at the vacation slides. The bumper of the big truck in front of us looked like…well, the bumper of a big truck. And I’m not sure where she was from, but it seems they don’t have a Staples Office Supply store there and she needed a picture to remind herself of the amazing things she’d seen in New York.
Since I had eight hours in New York, I decided to use the time and call the American Airlines office to double check that I could wait until I got home in two weeks, to use the credit from my missed flight. The nice lady (American Airline people are always nice...even when they're telling you bad news...) said that it would be no problem for me to wait until I got back, and credit for the full price of my ticket would be waiting for me. Full price? I explained that I was only rebooking the first part of my trip, and that I still planned to use the return portion of my ticket for the way home. Oh no, she told me...the entire ticket has been cancelled.
Of course it has.
So now I'm already in New York, on my way to Istanbul, and I have no return ticket. I spent the next three hours (on a very slow internet connection) trying to figure out how I was going to get home.
My eight hours in New York eventually turned into eleven and a half when our plane broke down and they had to find us a new one. Funniest moment of the evening? When the person at the desk said, “Hang with us folks. We’re just making sure that the new plane is flight worthy enough to get y’all across the ocean.” That just instills all kinds of confidence.
Oh yea, and after coming through security, as I was putting myself back together, the security person, who was a rather large, black lady, picked up my belt and asked me in a very serious voice,
“This your belt?”
“Yes ma’am!” (I actually did say ma’am…she was kind of scary).
“You sure?”
“Well my pants are falling down, so I’m pretty sure.”
Don’t ask me where that came from. I have no idea.
She looks at me and says, “That’s never good.” Then she hesitates for a moment and says, “Well, I suppose it depends on the situation.”
And then she handed me my belt.
With that folks…after an extra three and a half hour wait…I am about to get on a plane that they hope is flight worthy enough to get us to London.
And I haven’t even left the North American continent yet. Only thirty nine hours more to go…
In general, they say one should never write about one’s mistakes where the whole world can read about it. However, if I ever actually held to this unspoken rule, I would lose 90% of what makes up my blog. And that’d be kind of boring.
So in the interest of serving my friends and family and keeping us all entertained…I offer the following…
Every year my mission holds a conference in a different country for the team leaders of our various fields. Even though I technically lead no one (thanks Marcee) I still fall into the category of “Team Leader” and therefore as the leader of myself, I’m able to attend. I just never do, since I usually don’t have the funds. This year through the generosity of family and an anonymous donor, I was given the opportunity. It didn’t take too much to convince me since this year’s conference is in Turkey. Seriously…Turkey! Since Turkey is on my list of places to go before I die (I do actually have such a list), and since I’m not getting any younger (so they tell me) I figured this might be my only chance.
At this point I could write a number of other things to try and justify the trip, but I’ll just skip all that for the sake of brevity. If you want the list I’ve come up with, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get a copy. It’s extensive.
I booked my flights (which was complicated since I was trying to travel from South America to Turkey and, it seems, not very many people want to do that), and last Sunday headed for the airport with my bags packed and the guys in tow to say goodbye. I was more excited than I’ve been in quite some time. As you probably gathered in the last post, it’s been a rough few weeks here, and I was ready for a bit of adventure that didn’t involve me being dad to a dozen ex-street kids.
My excitement diminished significantly when the nice lady behind the counter informed me that I’d messed up and missed my flight. It’d been booked for the day before. All I can say at this point is that I have no idea what happened. When I book flights (which I’ve done a lot) I generally check the dates a hundred times before I make the final decision. As I said, this was a complicated flight to book and I’d looked at a lot of different flights. As well, South America uses a different set up for the calendar, and it may be that I got mixed up and thought I was clicking on Sunday, when in fact it was Saturday. In the end it doesn’t really matter what happened…what mattered was that I was without a ticket.
They also informed me that it would be in the range of $4000 to rebook my flights since I needed to travel the next day and that’s what the tickets were currently worth. That didn’t go over well in my head either.
So back home I went, and spent the next four hours on my computer trying to talk to talk to people to rebook my flights and hotels, etc. It didn’t help that the internet was ridiculously slow and I was only hearing every fourth word the other person was saying…which is why I ended up booking myself into a smoking room at the hotel in Miami, but that’s another story…
I finally decided to just figure it out myself. I ended up finding decent flights to Istanbul (not great, but not bad) and I was told that I could apply my lost ticket to future travel (the ticket agent was surprised by that since normally that’s not possible. For some reason I had a ticket that allowed me to use the credit in the future. So yea…thanks God…). In the end I felt like I wasn’t losing too much. Not $4000 anyhow…
Monday morning I was back at the airport ready to try again. I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous to travel! I just kept feeling like I was sure I’d missed something and would be told…again…that I wouldn’t be able to travel. But low and behold, the next thing I knew, I was on the plane and headed for Miami.
Miami night? Mostly uneventful. I ate at Subway and that made me very happy. I also got lost trying to find the hotel pool...it was very complicated. As I said, I had a smoking room but the smell wasn’t too bad and it was $10 cheaper than my original room…so bonus. My flight was at 11:00 AM so I set the hotel’s alarm clock, and to be doubly careful, I also asked for a 7:30 AM wake up call. No problem they assured me…
Imagine my surprise when I woke up, looked at the clock to see it read two minutes to nine! I had less than two hours until my flight LEFT. I went screaming out of the hotel (I threw my passkey at the front desk as I ran past) and hopped into the shuttle. He knew I was late and drove like a wild man to the airport. I ran inside…to see a huge lineup at the American check-in counter. I asked an American rep if there was anything I could do, and she said that since I was traveling internationally, I could do the self check-in thing. Self check-in? Nobody there! I was through in less than five minutes. Off to security…
…where there were at least 300 people in line. Now I knew I was in trouble. I asked another American rep if this was for sure the concourse I wanted (I didn’t have time to mess that up) and she told me that I could go through here, but if I went out the front doors of the airport, cut across the parking lot and went back in farther down the airport, I would end up closer to the concourse I wanted.
Great…off I went, running and dragging my luggage across the parking lot. I kind of crashed through the doors right in front of the security check point I needed. And guess what? There was ONE person in line. I was through security in less than three minutes and running for my gate. Although at this point I didn’t really need to run since I was now over an hour early. =)
From my bed to the gate? Less than 45 minutes…in the Miami airport no less. Of course it took me awhile to catch my breath and I was sweating like a pig, but still…less than 45 minutes!
Now that would be impressive enough, if the story ended there. But of course it doesn’t. My next destination was New York…
It was really fun flying into New York. We came in more or less over downtown, so I could see the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, among other famous sights. I had an aisle seat, so I had to look past the make-out couple beside me (I didn’t mention them, but suffice to say that before the flight even took off she had her legs overtop of his legs and they were…affectionate…the entire trip. Oh…and they were kind of old so it was sort of gross. No offense to older people…more power to you really…but not in the plane seat beside me for three hours).
Anyhow, we arrived eventually and I settled into my eight hour layover at the airport by looking for a McDonald’s. As I wandered away from the arrivals area, I suddenly had a thought…I wondered if my luggage was checked all the way through to London or if I had to pick it up. I asked one official looking guy and he assured me that it was, in fact, checked through to London. Then he hesitated and suggested that we talk to another lady with American. She looked at my ticket and said,
“Honey, (yea she called me Honey) you definitely need to pick up your luggage since you’re not leaving from this airport! You’re leaving from JFK!”
Of course I am.
So I hustled back to baggage claim…found my bag that was still happily going around in circles on the conveyor belt, and went looking for a bus to the John F. Kennedy airport.
Now that ride was kind of fun too. I didn’t see anything famous or anything, but there were lots of traffic signs to famous places…Brooklyn…Queens…Long Island. Places I’ve only read about or seen in movies. It’d be nice to go back some day and actually visit those places, of course, but I was still rather entertained by seeing the names. As was the lady in front of me it seemed. She took pictures of everything. That’s fine I guess, but I’d hate to be her family and have to look at the vacation slides. The bumper of the big truck in front of us looked like…well, the bumper of a big truck. And I’m not sure where she was from, but it seems they don’t have a Staples Office Supply store there and she needed a picture to remind herself of the amazing things she’d seen in New York.
Since I had eight hours in New York, I decided to use the time and call the American Airlines office to double check that I could wait until I got home in two weeks, to use the credit from my missed flight. The nice lady (American Airline people are always nice...even when they're telling you bad news...) said that it would be no problem for me to wait until I got back, and credit for the full price of my ticket would be waiting for me. Full price? I explained that I was only rebooking the first part of my trip, and that I still planned to use the return portion of my ticket for the way home. Oh no, she told me...the entire ticket has been cancelled.
Of course it has.
So now I'm already in New York, on my way to Istanbul, and I have no return ticket. I spent the next three hours (on a very slow internet connection) trying to figure out how I was going to get home.
My eight hours in New York eventually turned into eleven and a half when our plane broke down and they had to find us a new one. Funniest moment of the evening? When the person at the desk said, “Hang with us folks. We’re just making sure that the new plane is flight worthy enough to get y’all across the ocean.” That just instills all kinds of confidence.
Oh yea, and after coming through security, as I was putting myself back together, the security person, who was a rather large, black lady, picked up my belt and asked me in a very serious voice,
“This your belt?”
“Yes ma’am!” (I actually did say ma’am…she was kind of scary).
“You sure?”
“Well my pants are falling down, so I’m pretty sure.”
Don’t ask me where that came from. I have no idea.
She looks at me and says, “That’s never good.” Then she hesitates for a moment and says, “Well, I suppose it depends on the situation.”
And then she handed me my belt.
With that folks…after an extra three and a half hour wait…I am about to get on a plane that they hope is flight worthy enough to get us to London.
And I haven’t even left the North American continent yet. Only thirty nine hours more to go…
5 comments:
Oh my word. That's hilarious. What makes it funnier is I can see you having the conversation about the belt, and running across the Miami airport like a madman, and the look on your face as the lady took the Staples photo. So funny. New York is on my list of places to see before I die as well....could be pretty amazing.
Ken, it sounds like you are on an episode of "The Amazing Race!" ( have you ever seen this realitiy show down in Bolivia?) I love your adventure stories! I need to travel with you sometime!!! I know you will have a fabulous time in Turkey..it is well deserved! All the best on the rest of your journey! PS. I LOVED my time in NYC ..you need to go back for sure!
This is insanity, Ken. Wow. I'm so happy that you made it out there safe and sound... I really can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip!
Flying now-a-days kicks one's arse for sure. It is very difficult at BEST. Your experiences were a great read, I was out of breath just reading...Please take lots of photos and post them. And don't forget that they steal from your luggage about 100% of the time (my experiences anyway), so put anything you bring home and you care about in your pockets, not luggage. Your Alabama readers, Lundy & Dave
Dude, I laughed so hard and so loud my husband came busting out of the bedroom to see what was going on. At midnight. Thanks for that! I seriously can't WAIT to hear more.
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