4/29/2008

Back In Town

WOW! What a trip. Fort Myers to NY to San Fran to Honolulu to Kaui and then from Kaui to Dallas to Fort Myers. I think I've earned my airline wings for sure.

Where to being? Aloha airlines went out if business just before we left. Our tickets got got cancelled and then rebooked through American. Yup! You guessed it ! American canceled our flights too. They were dealing with all their flights being grounded due to lack of inspections. So our flight have been cancel twice now. Wait it gets better....

Luckily we found out before we made the 2 hour drive to the airport. Love the internet! Lucky my dh decided to hit the local airport instead of the Maimi(2 hours away and most likely a total mad house) one or who knows when we would have flown out of here.

The nicest FMyers gal ever re-booked our tickets. The Fort Myers airport ticket agent only had 3- in line before us ( not 100- thank you god!). Nicest thing about small airports. We went a little bit round about way to get to CA and it was no longer a direct flight (that was why we were flying out of Maimi) but we got there. In one piece, only having to switch flights once and head to NY from FL to fly to CA. But we got there and only lost most of the day of vacation. :(

3 days later....CA to Hawaii was a whole nother problem. We get to Honolulu and find out that while I am booked through to Kaui my dh is not. Originally we were booked straight through to Kaui. Before the cancellations started. Figures. About 15 phone calls later and we find out that American Express never bought my dh's ticket - they confirmed it on the itinerary but never bought him a ticket. Nice. So I fly to Kaui at 1pm and the first flight they can get him on is the 9:30pm flight. Lovely! 3 or 4 stand by attempts later and he finally makes it to Kaui around 7pm. Just in time for dinner. Who said flying was fun? Or easy? Lost another 1/2 a day. But there is more...

UGGG! There's even more fun on our way home. Our flight home gets cancelled. Not too bad you think getting stuck in Hawaii right? Except that we are flying home for 36 hours only to re-pack our suit cases because we have to fly to Minesotta for business. Hummm... I don't think bathing suits will be much use in 40 degree weather. Our 9pm flight out becomes a 3pm flight out the next day. The 3pm flight out leaves over an hour late because a bird or some other animal got sucked in the plane's engines as it was 2 days before our flight out was scheduled. Apparently mechanics are hard to come by in Kaui and they had to cancel 2 or 3 other flights out. So this one flight we are on is #1 unscheduled and #2 way over booked and #3 totally unorganized.

We finally leave and land in Dallas, Tx just in time to miss our connecting 12:30am flight from there to Fort Myers. Figures! Unscheduled flight do not even sell food. So No food, everthing in the airport is closed. Can't buy food and the next flight doesn't leave until 7:30am. Lovely! Go to a hotel and shower and head back to the airport 2 hours later to re-checkin in for what seems like the hundredth time. YAY, us! At least this flight leaves on time. But.....

You knew it was coming... they loose one of our suit cases. The one with all out business clothes in it. The one with my sneakers in it. That I need for our trip to Minesotta. For the flight out in less than 24 hours. The brand new sneakers that I bought just for this trip. That I have worn all of twice. I guess I'm going to have to buy another pair.....

1pm - 2 hours before our flight to Minesota leaves and just as I am about to walk out the door to go to the mall - to get another pair of sneakers....the phone rings. They have found our suit case. And it will be here in 20 minutes. Do I even hope? Oh thank you God! Maybe this second trip will be more uneventful than the last one.

It's not. But that is another post.....