Amy and I awoke and left her uncle’s house at 3:30 a.m. to catch our
flight home. Ugh, I was so anxious for
these early mornings to be over. We dropped
the rental car off, but I forgot my lumber support pillow in the front seat and
didn’t figure it out until we were going through security. By that time, it was too late to turn around. As I recall, our first flight to San
Francisco was uneventful, but with how the rest of the day would be unfolding,
I no longer remember the first flight. I
know that I finished my knitting square, and did some more Sudoku puzzles.
This time we had some cushion in our layover, so I pulled out my United
Club passes that I received as a perk of having a United credit card, and we
got to hang out in the United Club lounge while we waited. Free continental breakfast, free wireless,
and comfy chairs to rest in.
We walked out about a half hour before our flight was scheduled to
depart and when we looked at the board to verify the gate, we saw that the
flight was delayed an hour. So we shrugged
and went back into the lounge. After
said hour, I got an auto call from United saying our flight had been
canceled. Another perk of the lounge: a
whole service desk available only to people in the lounge. So where usually there’s only one or two
people serving everyone at a gate, there were three people helping a much
smaller group of us.
The next two flights home were booked.
They wouldn’t rent us a car because of the liability issue (if I crash,
United could be on the hook). But they
were going to arrange a shuttle bus.
Details pending, we went back to sit down. An hour later, we still hadn’t been paged or
anything, so we went back up to the desk.
Round and round we went. We were
just about to give up, rent a one-way car on our dime and drive, when a seat
opened up on the 1:30p flight. I put Amy
on it, and—for the first time—the clerks offered a standby option. Then a seat opened up on the 8:30p flight,
and they booked me for that so I’d have a reserved seat and then issued me a
standby ticket for 1:30p.
We went over to our gate for the 1:30p flight. While we were waiting, I saw one of my FPU
professors! He was on his way home from
China and had been traveling even longer than we had. We talked for awhile until we boarded. I was number 5 on the standby list, but I got
on! People were missing this flight
because their flights into SF had been delayed or cancelled, so that’s how so
many seats opened up.
We finally arrived home, a few hours later than planned, but it
worked. Amy’s sister picked us up with four
of Amy’s five kids coming direct from school.
They dropped me off at home first.
The first thing I noticed was how tall my grass was, so I kept Titus
with me to help with some yard work. We
got the lawn mowed and a little other clean-up done, and then I took him home.
Then I asked my friend and neighbor Greg to help me transport
cars. Heidi had driven to my house on
Friday. I wanted to get her car back to
her apartment so that I could take her directly home when I picked her up at
10p that night without her having to do more driving. I ended up leaving my car there so I could
clean out Heidi’s car a little for her before picking her up.
I picked Heidi up. She had to
walk to me from the walk-out area to the cell phone waiting area because her
cell phone had died and she couldn’t call to tell me she was ready. I dropped her off and then drove home to sleep
so I could tackle Tuesday. Phew! I did it! Travel blog done!
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