Monday, July 19, 2010

Air Travel

Air travel has been a royal pain in the buttocks since even before September 11th, 2001. But now it is seriously jacked up.

I have an artificial hip, a steel plate and a bunch of screws in my pelvis. So I set off the metal detectors even before 9/11. Now, because of all my "hardware", I feel like I have to get to the airport insanely early because I am afraid I will be pulled off into a room and strip searched.

When we arrived at John Wayne Airport and went through security, I managed to be screened by a female guard who took her job WAAAAY to seriously. She asked me several times whether I wanted to have a private screening. Every time she was about to frisk me she asked me if I wanted a private screening. I almost replied, "No, do you?" Our flight out was otherwise uneventful.

Our trip back was a little bit more interesting. We had a stop in Salt Lake City. We looked before we left for the Minneapolis airport to see if our flight was going to be on time and it was delayed. No big deal, we had a 2:15 layover. We watched the movie "Bolt" before we left for the airport.

At the Minneapolis airport, I took a picture of the Snoopy statue and the doorway into the Senator Larry Craig Restroom Tap Dancing Studio - Home of the Wide Stance. Our plane was delayed for a very long time. Long enough that when we took off, we knew that our over 2 hour layover was pretty much gone. We landed 5 minutes before our connecting flight was going to take off. Woohoo.

Because it sounded like we may still be able to make the connection, we got off the plane as fast as we could and ran our behinds off (ala OJ Simpson) from the end of one terminal to about midway into one of the other terminals. They had not shut the door yet, but they informed us that we had been booked onto a flight into LAX.

Um....NO!

Then they tried to rig it so we could get on our original flight, but the seats had just been booked that were left. They got us on the next flight to John Wayne in first class (YES!!!!!) and gave us each a $6 voucher for food in the airport for our trouble. I am still very very very very sore from running with all of our possessions through two terminals. It was a blessed miracle to have the first class seats with legroom after that ordeal.

Our friend met us at the airport and drove us home. We got our stuff in the house, and I literally fell into bed and slept for 11 hours. The house was hot because we had been gone and the AC was not on, but it was good to be able to rest after the stress of dealing with Delta Airlines' issues.

LAX, REALLY!!!!? Hell to the NO! Especially after the extra airfare paid for booking to and from SNA.

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