Today is the day we leave for vacation. Are we packed? No. Do we both have to work? Yes. We should have plenty of time to pack since our flight isn't until 7:30. So we both head off to work and we both get home about 1:30. We were not home 5 minutes when I get a call from the automated caller for American Airlines saying that our flight is delayed. Well that delay is going to put us into LAX after our connecting flight is scheduled to leave. Yep you guessed it major panic set in. Is there enough time to drive to LAX? There could be if we leave right this minute. I know that I have to contact the airline because if you don't fly the first leg the will cancel the second and if we don't make that flight we will miss the cruise. So I get on the computer and try to find a phone number, which of course they have a list of departments to call and end up calling reservations. After what seems like forever, about 10 min uses I get a real live person on the phone. After telling her our situation she tells me there is a 2:15 flight, well as it is now almost 2:00 there is no way we can make that flight. She let's me know that there is a 4:30 flight. YAY! But before I get to excited I asked her can we get confirmed seats, because the last thing I want to do is wait around and find that we can't get on the flight because it is overbooked. She said she was able to get us seats but she had to put us on hold so that she could get it authorized. Needless to say during this whole time on the phone we are scrambling to throw things into the suitcases. I also was trying to get a hold of Amanda to try to get her home ASAP because she was either driving us to the Fresno airport or to LAX. Well the wonderful woman on the phone finally came back and said all would be good that now they just needed to get us ticketed. They were still working on that when I finally asked if we should just head to the airport which she responded yes everything should be fine. That didn't really put me at ease, but I thanked her considerably and I think I made her day, I KNOW she made mine but she was laughing as we hung up.
I then ran the luggage out to the driveway to await Amanda's arrival as she had called and said she was on her way home. She pulled in just as I took out the last bag so I threw everything in the back of her car. Grabbed some salads that I had brought home and threw them in the car. Of course as I sat in the car it was oh no I forgot the luggage tags so I had to run back in and get those so I found some other papers I forgot. Finally we are on the way to the airport.
In the car I did check my American Airlines app and it showed the new flight. Again my heart was glad, but I would not be truly comfortable until I had tickets in my hand that had seat numbers on them.
Amanda pulled up to the curb of the airport and made sure we got all of our stuff out of the car. The best part of leaving is that your guaranteed a hug. We entered the airport to find only a few people in line to check in so we didn't do the kiosk check in. Little did we know that they were flying out of the country and taking what seemed like all of their belongings with them. So when we get up to the counter one bag (the last minute packed bag) was.......you guessed it over weight. The bag that had been packed the day before was under weight. I quickly tried to open the heavy bag, which meant I put the wrong combo in. I hate being under pressure, but finally got it open and I reached in and pulled Roger's toiletry bag out and closed it up again. It was still overweight but he let it go, thank goodness.
So we head to security and I notice that they do not have the fast pass working for those that have the TBA pre-checked people. Oh crap! I had not bagged up my liquids. We'll when I get to the TSA agent she tells us we can leave our shoes on but we need to take our liquids out... my reply to her is I didn't bring a bag so what do I do....just take them out and out them in a bin... I can do that. So we made it through security just fine with salads and all. We arrived at our gate with what should have been a little less than an hour to spare till boarding. I have to say it took my heart a few minutes to finally go back to normal. I knew everything was going to be OK when I saw our plane pull up and we boarded soon after. We are on our way to a great vacation.
