Traveling Adventures

The first in a series of posts about our trip to Los Angeles.

While Monica like planes and works for the largest aviation firm in the country, she hates flying, mainly because she's claustrophobic. On the other hand, I generally enjoy flying. I like being away from all your worries for a few hours and being able to read a good book or do a crossword puzzle. Also I find it a bit surreal that in a few hours I can get from to Seattle to someplace warm and sunny or to see family that I think of as so, so far away (or both). However since 9/11 and Robert Reid, flying has changed and we find ourselves on the same page some days. Wednesday's trip to LA was one of those days.

Our flight to LA was scheduled for 6:30. I called United at 4 and confirmed the flight was on time. When we arrived at the airport at 5, we were told the flight was now scheduled for 9 PM and the plane had mechanical problems and was still in San Francisco. When we arrived at the counter, we found they were moving people to the Alaska Air flight which was great. (If ever you're on a flight that's delayed more than an hour and it's not a weather issue affecting all flights, do anything you can to get on another flight. One hour often becomes two which becomes three which becomes a cancelled flight. Since they were already moving people, I knew this flight was going to be cancelled.) Unfortunately, Alaska's flight was at 8:50 PM and they couldn't transfer Monica's first class seat to a first class seat on Alaska, and they weren't very accomodating. Though really their failure was to keep "looking into it" rather than to clearly say that there wasn't a first class seat on ANY plane going from SeaTac to LA that night. After talking with them for at least 30 minutes and my running back and forth to the Alaska counter, I figured out the best we could do was get seats on Alaska and be on the wait list for first class upgrades for $50. After United transfered our ticket over to Alaska, we went to the Alaska desk and got a better seating arrangement in 5 minutes than we had in 45 minutes with United. (8A and 8C, no one in between and on the wait list for first class).

Unfortunately our adventure was just beginning. Because we now had paper tickets, we got selected for extra screening when passing through security. That was annoying but OK aside from someone forgetting she had a bottle of water in her bag. With a couple of hours to kill, we decided to have a sit down dinner an Anthony's. Service was slow; it took forever to take our order and bring my glass of wine. The bread (which was $2) arrived about a minute before our meals. Finally after we had finished and were thinking about dessert, we sat for 15-20 minutes and no one came by, not even to clear my plate. I saw our server a couple of times but apparently, she was too busy for us. Finally, I added up our bill as best I could remember, left cash on the table and walked out.

So we got to our gate and learned there were two no shows for first class; however Monica was third on the wait list. But the flight there was fine and we had plenty of room. There was a bit of delay taxiing to our gate and finally we made it to baggage claim at 11:40. We got our bags and went to catch the shuttle to Enterprise which runs every 5 minutes. After waiting a bit, and seeing other rental car shuttles pass, Monica wondered if Enterprise was still open. Having picked up cars at 2AM, I hadn't thought about this, but I called and found out they closed at 10 PM. Oh shit! It looked like there was a shuttle to our hotel, but it turned out the one that comes by every 10 minutes actually goes to a different Four Points. So finally we grabbed the Avis shuttle -- after confirming they have cars -- and figured we'll just get a car there.

We got a car and got going, but we wound up with a minivan and paying 3 times as much as our rate with Enterprise which is why I didn't rent from Avis in the first place. We loaded the car and got ready to go. But when I turned the key, nothing happened -- no noise, no lights, the car battery is dead. At this point we could only laugh. I went back, got a different car, picked up Monica and the bags and ten minutes later we were at our hotel. Fortunately our room was available though we had two double beds instead of one king; hard to care much about that after this day.

We wound up getting to bed about 2 AM and had to wake up at 7:45 to get to Paramount Studios for the tour the next morning. Off to a great start...