And, we're off... kinda

Monday, May 24, 2010
Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Its always good to get the snafus of a trip over with at the beginning of a trip, but 3:20am may be a little too early. I had scheduled a pick up at our house for 3:30am. Who wants to drive at that hour? And we were scheduled to come home at 10:30pm after 21 hours of travel and jet lag. Hmmm, sounds like fun. I say I had scheduled at 3:30am pick up until I spoke with the driver the night before. After thinking about it, we decided to change the pickup time to 3:15am, just to give a little extra time. Well, by the time 3:20am came around and no sign of the car, I called the driver. He apologized and said he was running late, he'd be there in 5 mins. I asked him where he was. He said he was just at 51 & Indian School Rd. (This is about 25 miles away from the house.) I know these guys can fly but unless he was in a helicopter, he wasn’t getting to us in 5 minutes and we weren’t going to be at the airport, 37 miles from the house, by 4:00am. Change of plan and we haven’t even left the house. We load up Chris truck and start off. As we get close to the airport we give work a call and our savior, Don, is at work and can drive us to the terminal, then bring the truck back to work. Not as easy as being dropped off but a good fall back plan!

Into the terminal we go and as expected, a huge line to check bags. At least we’ve got plenty of time – no worries. The joker behind the counter says there is a problem with Chris’s passport. WHAT? IT’S BRAND NEW!!? Yeah, so new, he hasn’t signed it. Real funny. We head upstairs and there is barely a line at security. We go through and I’m waiting for my black bag and it’s not coming through the machine. That’s because it wasn’t put into the machine. Because it was left downstairs at check-in. OH SHIT!! All our travel documents are in that bag. Sure, I made a copy and that is in Chris’ checked bag but what if it gets lost? MAJOR PANIC!! I head back downstairs to where the checked luggage is loaded. Had anyone seen a small black bag? Yeah, the gate agent has it. Now, am I ever happy I didn’t call the guy any names with the passport incident. He gives me the bag and I check nothing has been touched. Ok, back up to security that has a long line now. By the time I get to the head of the line, I’m shaking like a leaf. Just the thing TSA agents are looking for. The woman looks at my boarding pass and sees that I’ve already passed once. She looks at me and asks why. I tell her what just happened and ask if her nerves wouldn’t be shot by now too. She laughs and lets me pass. Oh joy. The rest of the travel day is just a normal day after all this. Sure, we had a 5 hour layover in JFK but it passed easy enough and we flew over Block Island which was cool but after the snafu in Phoenix, everything was easy. Next thing we knew, we were landing in Venice.
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