Vacation 2004: The Journey Out…
At five in the morning, we left for San Jose airport, five bags to be checked and five carry-ons in tow, two adults and two kids leaving for a mostly annual vacation. I alone knew that the two weeks were going to be spent in Virginia, close to the Shenandoah National Forest.
The first leg of the flight was uneventful. Nothing transpired to result in my usual semi-annual letter to American Airlines about bad service or unfair policies. Chicago meant Caesar salads at Chili’s, creme frappuccinos from Starbucks, and an hour layover that turned into an even later flight into Dulles on United Airlines.
Oh, it’s not that we had anything against American, or that we wanted to extend our stay in Chicago by 45 minutes, or even that we heard the food was better on United. We simply missed the American flight to Dulles. Sure, we were there 45 minutes before the flight. Of course we stayed close to the gate in terminal G, camping out just across the aisle. Naturally, at least one adult stayed with the bags and listened to gate announcements and watched the flight and floor traffic. Apparently, the ticket agents even paged us four times. We heard nothing, saw nothing, and apparently did nothing until the gate closed and the plane taxied off.
It was right about that time that I approached the check-in counter to find out when the flight was going to board. I’d been watching the announcements at the gate, and noticed the continued delays before departure. First it was ten minutes, then twenty. When the time approached what I thought was the boarding time, I thought perhaps that my watch was off by a time zone, thinking we still had an hour left before departure. Not so. At 1:33 p.m., two minutes before the rescheduled departure, the gates were closed.
A quick reshuffle of itinerary later and we were heading towards terminal One, with four seats on a United flight less full and 45 minutes later than the original flight on American. If we’d been participants on the Amazing Race, our disadvantage would have been minimal, as our new flight arrived 20 minutes early and there was no waiting for checked baggage; we just walked right up, grabbed our five check-ins and took off.
Even the Alamo rental experience went smoothly. We came in precisely during the few-second interval necessary to luck out and receive a complimentary upgrade to an intermediate class car. The lady standing at the counter before us got the free upgrade also due to lack of inventory of the smaller compact cars, but the couple who arrived just seconds before us were unlucky enough to get the one compact car that rolled in. We kept our fingers crossed to have our reasonable luck continue.
The airport exit was not exactly according to the MapQuest directions, so we ended up going too far and paying a toll for our mistake. Getting back in the other direction was equally difficult, but we managed to drive around the outskirts of Sterling, VA for a while, snapping pictures of the namesake roads. We arrived tired and disheveled at the Massanutten resort after about two hours of tedious driving made worse by fatigue caused by less than three hours of sleep the night before, and yet fifteen minutes ahead of our newly mandated schedule and only a half hour or so behind our original arrival time. Not bad! Check in was easy and professional, a far cry from the mess two years ago at the Sheraton Vistana in Orlando, FL.
Phil was there to greet us, notifying us of our placing second so far in the race…
Well, sounds like you came out OK, but missing the flight in the first place? Might have to start rethinking my selection of race partner…