I woke up on Wednesday morning at 3:30am in order to catch a 6:00am flight. Of course at this hour I feel like I am the living dead but I managed to get ready with only waking the dog. When I went downstairs to let him out I saw that it was sprinkling and heard a rumbling of thunder off in the distance. I thought nothing of it and loaded myself into the car. In this few short minutes the rain had really picked up and there was visible lightening flashes around. By the time I made it to the airport it sounded like World War III outside. I decided to park in the covered garage since you never know the type of weather you will encounter in Nebraska in the spring. While I was unloading my bags there was a HUGE boom of thunder and a lightening crack that literally made me jump and sounded like the entire airport had cracked in half! I figured I was already there so I made my way in to check my bag. I casually asked the check-in lady if the flight was delayed. Her response... "delayed? why would the flight be delayed?" I looked to my right and then to my left but unfortunately no one was there for a reality check. I said... "well... the crazy thunder and lightening?" "oh well you don't board for 20 more minutes." Ok crazy! 20 minute isn't very long... but I kept my thoughts to myself and headed up to security. I sat down at my gate and started to think about what I was going to blog about this week and jotted down some real fashion disasters to talk about... but instead of focusing on fashion disasters the day just kept getting worse so there is plenty to tell.
Since though I did observe these couple of disasters I will list here my observations as a small break in the horrible day disaster.
1) black tube socks that covered the leg between the tennis shoe and capri... horrible.... fix... short sport socks... let your leg hang out, that is what capris are designed to do.
2) tight capris with too small full butt underwear... it was doing her no favors.. fix.. buy bigger underwear or better yet go for a thong... the dental floss string is actually quite comfortable.
3) witch like high heal shoes, that I first off don't condone but they were paired with black ankle length sport socks that were coming out the top of the shoe.... throw those witch high heels away and start over... and only wear sport socks with tennis shoes.
Ok... I digress... so as I sat there observing these disasters the gate guy kept announcing that they were going to wait 10 minutes.. thunder boom.. huge lightening crack.... going to wait 10 more minutes folks.. thunder boom.. huge lightening.... ten more minutes folks... you get the drift... we took off 45 minutes late... I had a 40 minute connection.
I dozed off but was rudely awakened by the plane taking some very severe dips and sways. As you know from my previous blogs I am not a great flyer... in fact horrible. I looked out the window and it appeared like there was not a cloud in the sky however our flight seemed to still be acting like it is taking on white caps in the sky! I looked over at the lady next to me who was wearing a shirt that said "Jesus Girl" and she is praying under her breath! Holy Mary Mother of God... I braced myself for impact and laid my head on my knees. Mind you no one else seemed alarmed. Afterward I found out this is normal for Denver. Damn mountains.
We landed and I took off light a shot... mind you I am wearing 2 1/2'' heels myself since I am headed to a work conference. The lady at the end of the jetway told me that my gate was A57 and I was at A9. Since it was 10 after and my flight left at 10 after she advised I stop at the customer service center that was located at A36 and have them rebook me. I indeed ran to the customer service center still holding out hope they could hold the plane for me.... I ran up to the front of their line and no one seemed to notice the panicked lady looking like she was going to kill someone. They were all talking to each other! I wanted to shout HELLO CAN SOMEONE HELP ME? But I refrained and finally got this lady's attention. I asked her to call a57 and ask them to wait two minutes. She responded "gosh I don't know their number, Beatrice do you know their number?... hmm let me look it up" dial number. hang up. "no that's not it..let me try this number... no that's not it." I was seriously ready to blow! I mean come on you stupid POS this is your job!!! Finally she connected and was told that they just pushed back... and then informed me their next flight out wasn't until 3pm. Mind you this was from Denver, CO to Pueblo, CO a 2 hour drive and I had to be there by 11am to catch the tour in order to participate in the only event of the day... so I told the customer service lady I was just going to rent a car and drive.
I made my way out of the terminal and I will just summarize the next series of events...
- Hertz counter where the lady informs me a one way drop will cost me approx. $200.. mind you this is basically to rent this car for 2 hours.
- walk to baggage claim... no bag...
- walk back to Enterprise.... lady informs me it will be $250 to do a one way drop and tells me if Hertz will do it for $200 to take it!
- walk back to baggage claim.. no bag
- walk to Frontier to see if they will cancel my first leg back so I can rent the car for three days seeing that it is cheaper than a one way drop.
- Frontier tells me I need to walk a half a mile to the Great Lakes airlines because they are really the carrier.
- walk 1/2 mile to Great Lakes Airlines
- they tell me I need to contact my travel agent
- contact travel agent who tells me it is $200 to do a one way drop or $230 to take the car for three days with our contracted rate... so I decided to just do the one way drop and forget about the 3 day rental and driving it back to Denver.
- walk back to the baggage claim and go into the claim office... lady has my bag waiting.
- walk outside another 1/2 mile and try to get on a Hertz bus.
- Bus driver informs me this is the wrong bus and I need to walk across four islands and all the way to the end to get the proper bus
- I walk another 1/2 mile to get the right bus.
- Get to the Hertz car rental... where they inform me my one way drop is $250 and 3 - day rental returning back to Denver is $200. So I reconsider and book the 3-day.
- In the car I call back the travel agent who informs me I will have to pay a $150 change fee.. I argue.. the last lady didn't say anything about the change fee and said she would get it done..
- I sit on hold for 1/2 hour
- She comes back tells me she is still on hold and said she would call me back.
- 2 minutes later tells me Frontier is going to charge a $150 change fee because i could have made the flight.
- I yell at the travel agent
- She calls Frontier back who surprisingly enough cancels... no change fee.
Agghhh! Meanwhile I am driving... and within 2 miles on this expressway that I am not even sure I am headed the right way there is a $2.50 toll. I pay the toll and no less than 2 miles later there are signs for ANOTHER $2.50 toll! In the heat of it all I forgot to go to the ATM prior to leaving and realize I only have $6 in my wallet. I asked the toll booth lady in a panic how many more tolls are there because I can't afford to keep paying over $1 a mile to travel on this highway! She said that in 2 miles there was one more for $2.25! I literally scrounged change to find $2.25. When I came upon the last toll booth guy I asked him if this was for sure the last toll.. he said "Well it is unless you are going to Texas or Kansas." What the hell? I was in southern Colorado!
Luckily for me the rest of the week went off without a hitch. I was in fact traveling the correct way and made it to the conference in plenty of time. There were a few other strange things about the weekend and I again will quickly mention here...
- The first night included a meet and greet dinner. and... karaoke... completely random. I did not sing but the President of the association sang Great Balls of fire and had some very jerky quick movements. Hilarious.
- During the tour on Wednesday we were informed that when we got off the tour bus to beware of anything rattling... umm yeah.. rattlesnakes were very common!
- On the way back to airport on the Hertz bus the emergency exit on the top of the bus was popped up like a vent!
Currently I am sitting in the airport waiting to board this flight. I'm praying to God I have nothing more to write about this trip.
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