Let the Adventure Begin

To my faithful readers: I am WAY behind in blog posts, so, I'm cheating...I'm going to try to get caught up over the next few days and I'm going to back date my posts until I'm back on track.

I actually wrote this post on December 3rd while I was on the plane, so here it goes...

It’s our first day of vacation, I expected it to only be a day of travel; however, it’s already been an adventure worth blogging about.

We arrived in Acton last night and spent the night at Tom and Krystle’s; this morning, we had a chance to visit with Krystle and the kids (Tom had to work), and my mom. We left for airport around 9:15am, plenty of time to make a 12:20pm flight….or so we thought!

The drive was going great, and we both commented on how it always seemed to be a quick drive. Then we got to the border, and things CHANGED! There is a lot of construction happening on the Canadian side of the border, so at one point, we were down to just one lane. We were crawling along, but figured once we got past the bottle neck, we would be fine. Unfortunately, the bottle neck last a lot longer then we expected and even when it did open up in to more lanes, things were SLOW! The clock was ticking, and I was getting nervous.

Beside us to the right there was an empty lane – yes it was blocked off with pylons; yes, it was clearly marked ‘Trucks/Commercial Vehicles Only’…I don’t deny any of that. I joked with Curt that we should cut into that lane and fly through. Then, we noticed a Saturn Ion do just that…then it was a Lexus…the last straw was when we saw a minivan in that lane…that was enough to make Curt cut through the pylons! We fell into line behind the Lexus and minivan. Our rationale, we were desperate! It was getting so close to our flight time that we figured we either pay a ticket for using the wrong lane at the border (not sure if that’s what happens, but that’s what we told ourselves?!?)…or, we miss our flight and have to purchase new tickets (again, not sure what would happen if we actually didn’t make the flight, but we figured it would involve forking out more money to get on a new flight).

So, we’re sitting in line and along comes a Border Crossing official…he spoke to the driver of the Lexus, who then handed over his passport (which scared us, a little), but then he walked to the van and spoke to them briefly. When he made it to us, and asked if it was commercial entry, Curt stated ‘no’ and we were in trouble! He wondered why we had gotten into that line, but took no sympathy on us when we told him we were going to miss a flight…his response, he told us that if we had made it to the booth, the agent would have made us ‘go inside’ and we would have been busy explaining ourselves for at least an hour and a half. After some more stern lecturing, he told us we were getting a ‘huge break’ and he was going to let us merge back into the lane to our left.

Well, at his direction, we merged in front of a vehicle with two ladies in it….and, the passenger felt it was necessary to give us another lecture?!?! She was complaining that she had been waiting in line for an hour, and we shouldn’t get to merge ahead of her… Curt was driving, so he left his window down and listened to her yell at us...I think he was just smiling and laughing at what she was saying. I was already a little annoyed by this point, and couldn't stand getting yelled at by some random person. So, I leaned over and stated that we had also been waiting an hour, and as a result, had missed a flight…I think I then thanked her for letting us in front of her…or something like that?!?!

After the normal questioning from the Customs Officer in the booth, we got another little lecture, but it wasn’t too bad (and besides, we were getting used to them by this point)…and, we were on our way!

Curt did his best to get us to the airport QUICKLY, but, it was to no avail.

We started the self check-in process at the Southwest counter, but when Curt entered our confirmation number in the computer, it quickly told us that we had to check our bags in at least 30 minutes before a flight. At this point, the ticket agent turns his attention to us and asks what flight we were trying to catch…when we told him, he remarked that ‘seven minutes before a flight takes off is not adequate time to check-in’! Here we go again, another lecture! How many is that today?

Thankfully, he then proceeded to search for a new flight for us and we explained what had happened. Within a few minutes, he was able to tell us that we would be able to catch a flight at 2:20pm, it would take us to Phoenix, Arizona…once there, we would have a 40 minute layover, and then we could catch a flight onto San Diego. I don’t think I relaxed until I heard the magical words ‘there will be no extra charge to you’!!!

So, from there, things proceeded as they should have originally. We grabbed a bite to eat at the airport (Curt had a beer, and I was tempted to join him, just to calm my nerves). Boarding the plane went well, although Curt and I didn’t get to sit together (not something we could complain about, given the circumstances). I’m typing this in Word as the plane descends into Phoenix, I’ll post it to Blogger when we have internet access and we’ll see if I have to add to the drama from here or if we’ll simply make the connection to San Diego and get on with our vacation!?!?