1.10.2010

Back To Life, Back To Reality

  • Anybody seen a couple of red bags?
  • I didn't want to gamble on an 11:30 a.m. direct flight (the only direct flight) because we would be coming from the other side of the country that morning and even "reserved" transportation can sometimes be unreliable. It wasn't. It picked us up at 6:00 and had us in the San Jose airport by 10:00 a.m. That 3:00 p.m. flight with a stop through Miami looked like a long day.
  • Planning = Fail.
  • Something you don't want to do: Have a connecting flight in Miami with little time to do it, have to go through immigration, have to go through customs, have to recheck your bags, and walk a half marathon through that place to the next gate.
  • I knew there would be trouble when the ticket agent yelled at us to bypass the regular backage check and "run down there and drop your bags in the carpeted area and then run to E4"
  • When we left our bags with a young and I'm-in-no-hurry American Airlines attendant, I didn't have a good feeling.
  • After all that running, we made the connecting flight because it was delayed an hour.
  • I was trying to avoid the Cowboy game because I had it TIVO'd (controlled remotely by my cellphone in a remote village in Costa Rica, by the way.) It was on everywhere in the Miami airport. But still, I didn't look at any screen and kept away from the audio.
  • It was 40 degrees in Miami (or so they told us -- didn't go outside.) That never happens, does it?
  • Once airborne, the Captain got on the horn and told us, "For those interested in the game, Dallas is leading Philadelphia 24-7." Sir!!!!!!
  • We made it. Our bags didn't. If they find them, they'll deliver to the house today. As of this writing, they've found one but not the other.
  • I got to witness an AA employee tell a group of 15 passengers, "You will be staying in Ramada South tonight and we will pick you up the next morning." Yep, they missed their connecting flight in Dallas.
  • Note to the Anaheim Angels Baseball Organization. You've got some employee/scout/whatever (who looks like Mike Singletary) who is a Grade A jerk. Yelling at some AA employee over the phone over misplaced bags at midnight isn't getting you anywhere. And yelling "I want 30,000 frequent flyer miles deposited to my account now!!!" really made you look bad.
  • I sat by some young Nigerian looking fellow on the way home. Don't worry America, I had my eye on him.
  • But he did ask me if DFW was a "domestic airport" once we landed and I happily advised him, before I could think, that it was an "international airport." Great. I'm aiding and abetting the enemy.