Woke up, fell out of bed, and dragged a comb across my head at 2:30 AM in anticipation of Super Shuttle calling to tell me they'd be around early. A couple minutes before 4 AM, I went outside to wait. I expected, having not shown up early, they would at least show up on time. Silly me. Shortly before 4:30 AM I called and asked where my shuttle was. After 10 minutes on hold, I was told the shuttle would be around in twenty minutes and would take me alone directly to the airport. No worries, I thought, there's still time. Twenty minutes went by and instead of a shuttle appearing I got an automated phone call saying that the driver was fifteen minutes away. It was more like twenty, but he did get me to the airport with time to run through security and check-in.
An hour or so into my flight to Hotlanta it occured to me that I had no boarding pass for my connecting flight. I was due to arrive in Hotlanta at 2 PM and fly out agin at 8 PM. (Not my fault. Delta moved my first flight up 5 hours after it was booked.) I began to wonder if I was going to have to retrieve my bag and re-check in for the second flight. So, upon arriving, I talked to a ticketing agent and he assured me that my bag would go to Raleigh with me. I also asked if I could get on an earlier flight. He put me on standby for a flight at 4:20 PM.
I located the gate and waited for the flight to start boarding. I was first on the standby list. Shortly before boarding, the agent at this gate announced that the flight was full and there would be no standby passengers on the flight. In fact, when I talked to him he said that I should just get on my originally scheduled flight because the flights to RDU were all booked solid. On a hunch, however, I waited. I don't know if they all do it now, but Delta has a monitor showing the status of all standby passengers, upgraders, etc. It also shows whether or not there are empty or untaken seats. When all the passengers had boarded, there was still one unclaimed seat and I was the only person on the standby list. I asked him about it and he scribbled a seat number down for me and let me board. *phew*
The flight to Raleigh was a little over an hour, and when we landed the weather was nasty. In fact, the guy sitting next to me said he was surprised they let us land because of the severe storm and tornado warnings in the area! But I was on the ground in Raleigh, and my brother was waiting for me. That was all that mattered... until my bag didn't show up on the carousel. Turns out my bag never left Hotlanta— as I had expected. As I write this, we just got in from a Midnight run to Wal-Mart so I would have something to wear tomorrow.
It can only get better from here, right?
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."— Lao Tzu
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