Travel to the Hurricane

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Travel to the east coast has been crazy.

1st: The claims manager called me at 5a.m. as he thought I was in Georgia, he wanted to just touch basis. He told me, I thought, that I should live as close to Fredericksburg as possible. I went onto the hotel site and found a place and reserved it for 3 nights. Frankly I wasn’t sure that there would be a significant amount of claims. Then the next morning I got an email saying I should be near Fredrick, MD. Opsy! Of course my hotel was paid for and non-refundable but I can work around it.

2nd My flights included 2 connections. I really didn’t think a whole lot about it until I was nearing Phoenix and realized that I had 30 minutes between the flights. Well of course I had to run from one end of the airport to the other carrying my very heavy camera bag on my back plus a 2nd laptop and my carry-on. I barely made the flight; everyone had already boarded but about 3 of us from the 1st flight. This time though they took my wheeled carry-on as there was no room on the plane. They told me I’d get it in D.C.

We got to Charlotte and again I had 30 minutes total and gates were totally on opposite ends of the airport. I again made the flight as they were giving seats to the standby passengers. Someone was already in my seat so that as I was sitting down finally the plane started moving. I’d also noticed that I received some claims and that one said rush. RUSH? Sorry but there was no time to rush on my claim, I was barely making my flights.

By the time I got on the plane to D.C. I was really getting hungry. I’d had the fruit/cheese plate on my earlier flight but it was small- 2 strawberries, 2 very small bunches of grapes, 4 slices of cheese and 1 small wedge of brie. There were crackers but they were wheat so I couldn’t eat them and since my bag was taken containing my rice crackers I was out of luck. So I was starving, wanted a latte, was tired.

I was so happy getting on that last plane because I was getting a window seat at least. The earlier flights were not by windows and everyone around me kept their windows closed. Well I got to my seat to find that there was no window at all, there wasn’t even a window close by, and I only had the smallest view out of the window by the person in front of me. Of course my books were all away so I decided to just sit still and clear my mind. I’ve forgotten how to just sit for a few minutes.

Finally we got into D.C. but then neither bag made it off the plane. When the announcement came that all of the bags were off about 5 of us were standing there. I went immediately to the customer service as I had located it earlier anticipating trouble. The woman took my info and thought that the bags might still arrive.

I got my rental car and drove down to Fredericksburg, stopping at a store to pick up water and instant food. Now to see if the storm does much.

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