It might be interesting to note that this is currently being written in our favorite free boarding house in Santa Barbara. The 6:00 am flight that started our journey to Europe was canceled this morning, and we spent the next few hours bitterly assessing the options.
The whole process started around 4:15 am when Dad checked our flight loads on the internet. He was slightly shocked to notice that, lo and behold, our flight out of Santa Barbara had been canceled. When we awoke, expecting to embark on our journey shortly, our travel agent had already been seeking alternate routes and times. Their proposed rescheduling called for us to arrive in Europe an entire day later than expected, adding long layovers and increased travel anger. When the Indian/Indonesian phone representative offered to make amends by putting David on our flight for a low fare of $100, we opted to talk to a real human and went to the airport.
Our arrival at the airport was met by a future of three hours discussing the folly of United Airways and their compulsion to book flights that will be canceled 75% of the time. Fortunately, the master of our fate was a David Bookbinder, a disgruntled but helpful US Airways employee. Having dealt with similar situations many times before, Saint Bookbinder was more than happy to “stick it to the man” and make our lives more enjoyable. Our new flight leaves at 1:30 and gets in only 6 hours later than our original plans. The route is more direct, our seats are better, and we each got a voucher for a free international flight. Also, when figuring out David’s return flight, he changed the arrival from 1am to 9:30, as it was almost certain the 1am flight would get canceled for the same reason I’m writing this now.
In short, our journey has not yet started, but we now have starting plans for a second one.
This blog post was ghostwritten by Jeff Lee.
p.s. At least we have cool yellow stuff sacks courtesy of the alleged official author of this blog:
I must say, this is incredibly well written.
Jeff,
Well written, sure, although it does raise questions like, what is a retired couple doing coming up with names for newborns? will the child’s citizenship be at all influenced by place of conception? Will the child , this David Bookbinder, know that most people are not air gypsies, waiting for stand-by flights like the rest of us wait for rush hour traffic?