Friday, July 07, 2006

Travel "Arrangements"

I use the term loosely.

I booked a flight from Seattle to Las Vegas to Des Moines. This was good.

Except that the Northwest cancelled the Des Moines flight, so when I got to Las Vegas, I found out that in stead of waiting until 12:30AM, I had to wait until 6:55 at which point I would fly to Minneapolis, and then connect to Des Moines.

I spoke with the airline, and they said that because I purcased the ticket online (from Orbitz), there was nothing they could do, except reschedule my flight, but there was no flight to get me to Des Moines any faster. So I asked them about getting me a hotel voucher, and Orbitz pointed at Northwest, and Northwest pointed at Orbitz. Apparently I had been "notified" of this change in an e-mail entitled, "Prepare For Your Trip - Des Moines 7/7/06" which I had assumed to be simply a reminder, since there was no mention of a change: it was merely reflected in the "Ticket Information" section of the e-mail. In any case, what was I supposed to do? Get another flight within two days?

The solution to this particular conundrum lies in the fact that I am in fact not headed to Des Moines at all, at least not until next weekend. Really, I need to get to Bradford, Illinios, and there are other airports with connecting flights to them that would cut travel time off my trip: Peoria and Moline. Once the Lord brought this new approach to my attention, I had only to chose between the two. I could get to Moline earlier, but it would be easier to get a ride from Peoria, since there are likely others using that airport and we're not supposed to get to Shallowbrook Farm until the afternoon, so Peoria it was.

I still won't sleep in a bed tonight, but I wasn't going to anyway, and this will actually cut time off my trip to Bradford.

I know, I know--I'm passing up the perfect opportunity to spend nine hours "doing" Vegas and getting married to a hooker by Elvis.

The airport here in Vegas has free WiFi, you just have to give them an e-mail address to log in as a guest. I hate it when they try to charge exorbant amounts of money for access, simply because they can, especially at airports where people have paid to be, and might need to log in to check travel arrangements and confirmations.

7 comments:

  1. Oh, sounds like a nightmare to me!Seattle to Des Moines via Vegas seems a bit out of the way. Like flying to Europe from NY via Detroit...

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  2. You definitely should have gone for the hooker option. We totally could have thrown you a reception party once you guys got home!

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  3. No, Deborah, that would not work. Tim would never hear the end of it from me if he did that. "Why do you like her? The answer had better be good!" Right, Timmy? ;)

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  4. Oh, and trying to be as much like a Biblical prophet as possible is not an acceptable answer!

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  5. Hahahahaha! We'd have lots of fun with that one.

    Or, "But . . . Jesus married Mary Magdalene!"

    (Oh nevermind, that's what Dan Brown would say.)

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  6. Yeah, I learned the hard way about those airline "discounters" that save you a few bucks and make your ticket so inflexible you have to carry it in a sheath instead of your wallet. If my next ticket' price is anywhere close to the airline's price, I'm going to buy it direct.

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