Advertisement
Published: September 30th 2017
aa
I actually had to borrow a suitcase for this trip because I don't even own one, and the backpack wasn't going to cut it this time.
I almost cried when I packed the suitcase ... I felt like I was cheating on my backpack. I thought of all the tender moments that we shared in Europe ... carrying her on my back as we took moonlit walks along the ocean, her arms draped over my shoulders, caressing my non-existent pecs. Baby, please forgive me!!! The suitcase means nothing to me!!!
Though I must admit, our relationship has lost some of its magic after returning from Europe. I've tried re-kindling the passion and re-living our glory days in Europe by carrying her around the path behind my house. But I stopped after the neighbours started giving me strange looks.
I don't understand why - is it so wrong to walk around with my backpack while wearing shorts and sandals? Is it so crazy to do it while it's -30 C? As Meat Loaf once said, "I would do anything for love." And there is nothing I love more than my backpack ... except for maybe pain au chocolat, gelato, and a certain creepy-little blue-haired doll.Geo: 51.0451, -114.063
Tam showed up at my house, where we waited for Rodney to give us a ride to the airport. Rodney dropped off some of Dorianne's Christmas cookies - mmm mmm ... food for the long journey that we had ahead of us!
Got to the airport and encountered a huge line-up to check in (almost 1.5 hours). The flight was delayed 2.5 hours so there was tons of re-booking happening. We got screwed - we're going to miss our Phoenix-Las Vegas connection, which will probably cause us to miss our Las Vegas-Miami connection, which means that we will miss the cruise! We could try going on standby on the later Phoenix-Las Vegas flights, but the chances of getting on are almost zero. All those flights are already overbooked.
The ticket agent at the US Air desk tried to book us on an Air Canada flight - there's a Toronto-Miami flight that gets us there on time, but there's no way to get us to Toronto. Things were looking bad ... but then ... they managed to find a Continental flight via Houston that would just get us there on time!!! Hooray!!!
They printed me my ticket and told me
aaa
Tam parked his car in my garage for the week. I was hoping that his RSX and my EL would mate while we were away and give birth to an NSX. I would've even settled for a S2000, but no such luck! to run - only had 25 minutes to get through security and customs. I bolted while they were finalizing Tam's ticket. Yes!!! As I was making my escape, the ticket agent ran after me and yelled "Wait!!!". I went back to the ticket desk - they couldn't get a ticket for Tam! Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! I felt like a prisoner that had been granted a pardon ... but just as I was walking out of the prison gates towards customs, with my ticket in hand .... a cold hand snatched me back into my prison cell.
So what did I do? I shoved Tam to the ground, yelled "Screw you!!!", and ran for it. It was like a scene from "The Grinch" ... I almost made it through to customs, when Tam started sobbing and bawling "I need a hug!!!". Just like the Grinch, I felt my heart grow several times its original size (it's now as big as a golf ball) ... I couldn't abandon my friend when he needed a hug! So I went back, picked him up off of the ground, told him that everything would be fine, and paid some little girl $5 to give him a hug.
b
I thought I packed a lot of stuff - but then Tam showed up with his two suitcases and duffel bag!!! I don't want to sound sexist ... but I will!!! Tam packs more than a woman does!!! But I kind of understand ... I guess he just wants to look good on the cruise and needs all that space for his make-up and evening gowns. It was a touching moment. Whether we made the cruise or not, we were still in this together. So together, we knocked down that little girl, yelled "Screw you!!!", grabbed back my $5, and also her Barbie backpack (I've always wanted one). We scored big ... candy for the trip, a Harry Potter book to read, and a Tickle-me Elmo doll. That doll would prove to come in very handy for me on the long, cold, and lonely flight to Miami ......
In hindsight, we could have asked about Ft. Lauderdale flights, or checked with WestJet ourselves (US Air has no agreement with them, so they couldn't even try for us). Oh well ... what do you do? All you can do is laugh about this situation ... c'est la vie! I'm glad that I'm more laid back nowadays - I can see the humour in this crap! Our only option now was to fly standby and hope for a Christmas miracle! It's not likely though, at this time of year. But maybe we can catch a ride on Santa's sled!
The ticket agent told us to pack a few more essentials since we would be flying stand-by. I had
c
Scrambling to re-pack before boarding. Since we were forced to go standby, we needed to take on as much clothing as possible on to the plane.
You probably noticed that some portions of the photo have been censored. Tam's suitcases were packed with questionable "outfits" and certain battery-powered "devices" that aren't suitable for children to view.
Those "devices" gave us some trouble with security. When asked what they were, Tam responded "I like to call them Weapons of Mass Destruction". Yech!!! packed a little duffel bag - I was going to use it to bring some things on board, but the zipper broke. Bad Karma! That's what you get for knocking down little girls, I guess. Luckily Tam had brought all those extra bags - he had a small suitcase and duffel bag that could be brought on board. So I used one of his ... I guess I shouldn't make fun of him for packing so much anymore ... but I will continue anyway!
We were like a couple of madmen, packing and unpacking our luggage at the conveyor belt that would carry away our luggage. Shirts and underwear were flying everywhere! I almost lost an eye! Blinded by Tam's flying banana sling ... how cruel and twisted would that be?
It felt so wrong ... I am used to packing meticulously - clothing rolled up, using every single cubic centimeter of available space. It's like a complex game of Tetris with pants, shirts, and undies. I take pride in my packing skills - it was painful to haphazardly jam my clothing in!!! But I actually managed to almost empty out my entire suitcase into Tam's duffel bag and my
e
A view of the famous strip, taken while we were waiting to take off from the Las Vegas airport. daypack.
Adding insult to injury was the fact that our clothing was all mixed up ... my underwear has never been in such close proximity to another man's before. I felt so ... violated ... such intimate mixing of men's undergarments is unnatural. I might have to disinfect everything before wearing it, or maybe even just burn it all!
We started to consider our options - maybe ditch the cruise, and hang out in Florida? Or fly to South America? We could try to catch up to the cruise in Belize - but the problem is that we're not guaranteed to get to Miami until the morning of December 26. If we can catch a Belize flight right away, we can theoretically catch the cruise. If not, it might not be worth it to even bother trying to catch up anywhere else.
If we could've booked the air portion with Carnival, we'd be covered for this (it could be very expensive to try and catch up). But our late booking meant that this wasn't possible. This could be the start of "The Amazing Race" for us! Too bad there isn't a million dollar prize awaiting us at the finish!
So
f
There was a little surprise waiting for Tam in his seat-back pocket. Mmm mmm ... dried-up orange peels!!! We were hungry, so we ate it. A nice warm-up for the cruise, where people would line-up to stick their snouts in whatever slop was being served at the buffet. we made a pact to enjoy ourselves, no matter what. We decided to splurge and have a nice meal before taking off - Harvey's burgers! I haven't eaten fast food in ages. Their fries have improved greatly and are no longer absolute crap.
On the bright side, I managed to snag a decent seat on the flight - at the front bulkhead, with tons of legroom. Score! But the LCD screen was messed up - couldn't watch the crappy Disney movie. Maybe that's not a bad thing?
Guess there's a newer security requirement that I wasn't aware of. I wasn't allowed to wait in the first class area for the bathroom. I guess you can't have people loitering near the cockpit area. Or maybe it was just an attempt to keep riff raff like myself out of the sight of air travel's upper crust.
This whole thing could turn out to be crap, in the end. If we don't board a flight to Vegas tonight, we'll be stuck sleeping in the Phoenix airport because hotels are apparently fully booked. And if we have to catch a Christmas day flight, who knows if there'll be a hotel for Christmas Eve? No hotel ... no showers for days ... this could be some bad stuff about to happen! It's my first Christmas away from home - it's a good thing that Christmas isn't a big deal for me, because it might suck!
I haven't had too much luck with travel recently (i.e. - getting bumped off my Europe flight this summer). While we were waiting to check in earlier today, I pointed out to Tam the internet terminal in the UPS office that I used to re-book my Madrid flight this summer. I vaguely remembered some lame-ass fool pleading with the Canadian Affair agent to let him on the flight ... he even gave some lame-ass story about trying to find a girl in Spain! Wait a second ... that lame-ass fool was me!!!
We could have avoided this whole situation if we booked a more expensive flight that got us to the Florida the night before. But we figure that we'd save on the flight and one night's hotel. What a mistake! Of course, it's a really good thing that we didn't book the flight through Denver. It would have been a 12 hour layover, but we would have ended up being stuck there for days because of the blizzard problems.
We landed in Phoenix and had missed our flight by a few hours. But we heard the PA announcing final boarding for the next flight to Vegas. I wanted to run for it, but Tam was stuck in the back of the plane and took forever getting off. We weren't sure if there was room for us, but we hauled ass over to the other gate. Of course, the gate HAD to be WAY on the other side of the terminal. I regretted stuffing Tam's duffel bag so full of stuff - try running with that huge bag and my skinny arms - not easy!
We got there and they had seats for us! It was a Christmas miracle! The flight was actually pretty empty - we probably only made it on board because some other poor person got screwed and missed their flight. I got to my seat and found someone sitting in it. Two cute brunette hotties wanted to sit together ... so who was I to refuse? Things were definitely looking up (it doesn't take much for me, does it?). Barring a disaster, we should be able to get to Miami on time.
I had a Croatia "flashback" moment while de-boarding the plane (see blog entitled "Dubrovnik: Worth a second look!" http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/pwong/europe_2006/1157363160/tpod.html?tweb_UID=pwong ). I waited in my seat for Tam (stuck in the back again) as the cute brunette that took my seat walked by. I checked her out in a very obvious manner - her friend was several steps behind and totally busted me. She gave me a funny look and all I could manage was a sheepish smile. I felt bad ... so I checked out the friend as she walked by, too. I'm equal opportunity!
We sat in the Vegas terminal and chilled out while waiting for the next flight. The urinals in the airport are very unnerving ... there are mirrors directly in front of you. Pissing and staring at your face at the same time? Just plain wrong! Though I did have a rather romantic moment as I stared deeply into my own eyes, winked, and said "How you doin'?"
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0392s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
tamt
non-member comment
$5 hug girl? You paying a girl $5 to give me a hug?? What!?!? That must have been a coverup to pull your Isabel doll out of your carry-on to squeeze her after you left me behind at the check-in counter. I always suspected but never knew
what you carried in your day pack. Now I know!