Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Fantasy evening

This is how it was supposed to happen:

My sister and her new husband flew into Denver at 8 PM last night with a four-hour layover before their red-eye flight to San Jose, Costa Rica. Dan and I picked them up at the airport and we drove into town to have dinner at a tasty Mexican place that's open late. They brought a few things I'd left behind at their place (all my makeup, for instance) and it worked out so conveniently. We drove them back to the airport in plenty of time for their midnight flight to kick off their honeymoon, and went home ourselves and ate ice cream in our newly cooled-down house.

This is how it actually happened:

My sister called me 40 minutes before their flight was even supposed to board yesterday afternoon to tell me their flight was listed as delayed, but with no idea as to how long. A few minutes later she called again to tell me the official delay was TWO HOURS.

TWO HOURS.

So we went grocery shopping after I got home from work, and she called me again to give me an official ETA on their flight: 9:51 PM. Obviously, there would be no time for going to dinner, and (not expecting their flight to be delayed two hours) she had brought my stuff with them. Which we had to go get, because they didn't want to haul a pair of my jeans and my makeup all the way to Costa Rica and back! So we drove out to the airport last night, waited for them to tell us they were off the plane, met Curtis at the passenger pickup area, and gave him some sandwiches and snacks we'd made for them so they wouldn't starve (not much is open at 10 PM at the airport). It cost us an hour and a half of travel/wait time and probably 5 bucks in gas, but at least I have my stuff and they got some food and by now they are on a jeep somewhere in the wilds of Costa Rica. I hope they have fun.

3 comments:

Monkey McWearingChaps said...

The delays are just un-fucking-believable these days. I'm not sure if I wrote about it but when I was in DC I ended up getting in at 2 in the morning when I was supposed to get in at 7. It's even getting bad with Southwest these days (though they'll get you there within 2 hours)-I think the last time Gopal flew out of L.A. he had to wait 2.5 hours for his flight back to SJ.

We almost picked Costa Rica but compromised on Belize for turquoise water.

MLE said...

Monks, the stupid part was that they blamed the delay on weather in Denver (the late plane was coming from Denver) but we didn't HAVE any bad weather! Just a few clouds! I hate when they lie.

Cagey (Kelli Oliver George) said...

Yowser! At least, you got your stuff. Probably would have cost more to ship it, no?

When I was flying Southwest a few weeks back, I sat next to a hardcore business traveler who said he switched to Southwest specifically because they are more reliable. Funny, eh?