Oh, what a breakfast. The standard gallo pinto and fresh fruit, along with pastries, bacon, cereal and amazing do-it-yourself Belgian waffles. In retrospect, I should have taken that delightful start to my day as a sign of good things to come. Instead, I had a lot of anxiety about whether or not we’d get out of the country and get our mangled travel plans back in order.
Before we even reached the American Airlines desk, some of American counterparts confirmed that the flight to Miami was going to depart as planned. This time we made our way into the open air “gate” area and watched our plane touchdown like a big white mirage. We made it to Miami and I immediately jumped on the phone to Westin to see if they’d forgive our missed reservation the previous night and move it to the current night. I reached someone at Westin reservations who told me that I’d have to call Priceline because I had bid on the room and won it there. I called Priceline and was told that they could do nothing to help me, and that I needed to call the hotel if there was any chance of getting the reservation changed. My hope was dwindling to depressing levels when I called the front desk of the Dallas Westin directly. I spoke to a wonderful girl name Emily who, when she heard our predicament, changed the reservation.
We didn’t have long to get lunch before our flight was scheduled to depart for Dallas, so we sat down at a sports bar in the terminal and ordered our food. I got a beer and quickly swallowed the $3 shot of tequila that came with it. I needed courage and assertiveness.
I called Southwest Airlines, remembering that you “attract bees with honey,” but knowing full well that I might have to get forceful, dramatic, pushy and/or desperate in order to get our already missed flight (from Phoenix to Portland) switched to the following day. A man who sounded competent and fairly kindhearted got on the phone and I jumped into my frantic, jumbled speech: “I’m in a bind and I’m on my honeymoon and I hope you can help me…”
Moments later the man said, “It looks like you’re already booked on tomorrow’s flight.”
WHAT? I started to cry a little in relief, sniffling and babbling thanks to this poor guy sitting in a call center in who-knows-where. Once we would arrive home the next day I would find an email from Southwest in my inbox. They had received the message I sent from the Liberia hotel and, taking great pity on me, changed the reservation – though that is something they hardly ever do because they have “rules” to abide by.
I returned to our table in the restaurant and told Jesse the news. We were jubilantly thankful. Our waitress poured our remaining beer into a “to-go cup” for the plane (who knew that was an option?!) and we made it to our gate just in time to board the flight to Dallas.
Upon our arrival, we took the Westin shuttle to our hotel. The room was beautiful, but we had little time to enjoy it. We got dinner at the Denny’s across the street and then headed straight for bed. We rose very early the next day and hopped on our plane to Phoenix, where we met Johnny. In a wonderful display of kindness, he brought all the rest of our luggage to the airport for us. We checked as many bags as we could (we were now traveling with 6 of them) and started the 4 hour wait for our flight to Portland.
In my carry on book bag was the Dia de los Muertos style skull sculpture (skullpture) that our dear friend Stephanie had given us as a wedding gift. The massive clay skull is painted and bedecked with beads, jewels and knickknacks. I was fairly apprehensive to send the gorgeous beast through the x-ray machine at the security checkpoint. I carefully set my bag on the conveyer belt and walked through the metal detector, keeping my eye on the machine screener. I watched as the skull slowly rolled onto the screen, a tangled unidentifiable mess to my untrained eye.
“WHAT is THAT?!” yelled the lady.
“A skull,” I replied.
“Alla the sudden I’ve got somebody LOOKING at me,” said the lady.
“It was a wedding gift,” I said. Like I really needed to say that.
“Then you’ve got some PRETTY WEIRD friends,” said the lady.
I wasn’t about to dispute that.
They didn’t even want to unwrap my skull and look at it; I was shocked. Their loss. We had made it through our last significant challenge. We boarded the plane to Portland, then took the MAX from there. We got home by about 6:30pm after more than 2 weeks away. Jesse forgot to carry me over the threshold. We were home and we were married!
THE END.
Did Steph tell you that we were entangled in some weird airport-skull situations en route to AZ?
ReplyDeleteShe did! That's what had me so nervous going through security. I was happy no one was really staring at me, thinking I was a murderer or something. :)
ReplyDeleteWe also found ourselves in an undesirable conversation about it with two older ladies at our gate, one of which was wearing a windbreaker jacket/pants combo if I remember correctly.
ReplyDelete