Sunrise Siesta
It’s 6am on Friday and guess what? Yep, we awoke at 4:30am to prepare for our 5am Uber to the San Diego Airport for our Alaska Airlines direct flight to Orlando to start our Florida extravaganza. Last night we had to go pick up Natasha at the airport as her Jet Blue flight from JFK was an hour late. We only got home at 10:30pm so we knew we were going to have to sleep fast and carry on through the day today as best we could. So, after a quick ablution I sat down to dress (I always lay out my clothes for such early morning activities even though it probably only save 10 seconds or so), and I decided to make a quick check of my iPhone, to see if the flight and the Uber were on time. Oops, at 3:34am, Alaska Airlines emailed me to say our flight had been cancelled and they had rebooked us for tomorrow, Saturday, for a two-legged itinerary via Seattle that would get us into Orlando at midnight. Well, that predictably sucked, so we sat there for a moment contemplating our next moves. The main event for the trip is the celebratory dinner for Lennie tomorrow night. Kim had organized it for some twenty guests, and this change would have us missing that altogether. The other reason for the pause was that we both knew that I was on the edge about going anyway. As though on cue, Natasha said on the drive home last night that she was surprised I wasn’t staying on the hilltop to begin my construction. At that time I waved it off and said, no, I was doing the trip to support Kim and that was that. Now, at 4:30am, Job has just had another trial placed before him to test his supportive resolve.
I forced the cancellation idea to stay in the back of my mind while Kim scanned the internet for alternative flight. I had visions of a middle economy seat for five hours, but I refused to let my mind go there. We live in a moment of travel uncertainty with Omicron raging across the world and impacting travel as much as any sector. One hears of the thousands of daily flight cancellations even though we are well past the “holidays” by this time. Apparently Alaska Airlines is not so free of its staffing problems just yet though I have no causality evidence to prove that. What I do know is that the ONLY reason we would book Alaska Airlines out of San Diego was that they had a direct flight with decent first class seats available. Price was not the objective and they were priced on market, not below or above. But now they wanted us to go a day later through Seattle and that was a non-starter. Kim quickly determined that there were two first class seats on Delta through Atlanta, so I opened the Delta App. Naturally, my travel connections are somewhat dated, so I had to go through the hassle of resetting my app, but once I did I managed to find my way to those two seats. The first decision was whether to just book round trip and deal with Alaska later or try to split the trip, keeping the direct return flight on Alaska. No lo contendere, as they say in law school. Alaska Airlines had had its pseudo-direct chance at my travel plans and had swung and missed, do I was going round trip even though I know Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport and must say I hate it for its large size and need to scurry among the flight wings. Booked and done online and I was even able to use some of an eCredit to defer some of the cost. This flight would leave San Diego at the more civilized time of 11:30am today, so I now have the time to rearrange the other aspects of the trip.
Next thing was to cancel my Uber ($36 cancellation fee going right to to the newly established budget line item entitled Travel Cancellations). Rebook Uber for 8:30am pick-up…easy, since they’ve just made a nice cancellation fee. Hertz might need to be told, but I had checked in online last night. I must admit, that was the first time I had done that for a rental car, but I defaulted to thinking that I just keep the reservation intact as I have the confirm in my eWallet already and the time difference was not so great anyway. Done. Now back to Alaska Airlines to try to reclaim some credit since this was all their fault (not that that ever seems to matter with airlines). The online cancellation button would only take me to a dialogue box that said I had to call them. When I did they started their voicemail with the suggestion that I do this online, but I wasn’t falling for that head-fake, I stayed the course and went on hold with some nice Muzak. I sat down at Kim’s vanity in the closet, which is where this all began some two hours ago when I read my Alaska Airlines email. No problem, I’ll write a story slamming Alaska Airlines for screwing with our travel lives.
But no, Alaska Airlines picked up within five minutes and I barely had cleaned out my inbox and had not started the story. A very polite man handled my cancellation and politely understood that I preferred to cancel both directions and get a refund. He did warn me that it was a 7-10 day backlog on refunds and I understood, thinking that so long as it fits into the American Express billing cycle I was satisfied. Net, net, if they give me all that I paid and I deduct the price of Kim’s ticket (she was not eligible to use any of my eCredit and poor Kim had no eCredits of her own for some reason), I am over $700 in the black on this trade on a cash basis. Not bad, Rich. Opps, make that $664…I forgot the Uber sting. Still, not too bad at all. And here’s the Silver Lining, I get to spend five hours less in Orlando, which, all things considered, gives me three extra hours in San Diego (good stuff) and two extra hours at Atlanta Hartsfield (less than good stuff). Again, net net, I figure I’m ahead of the game so long as Hertz retains its constancy and doesn’t give away my car. Since I don’t leave until Sunday morning for the Palm Beach roadtrip, I think I can fix any Hertz damage at a local Orlando level.
I have two whole hours now before Uber gets here for the next chapter of this travelogue, and I have burned up the keys getting this story written, so quickly that I am going to slide it in as today’s story (how’s that for contemporaneous reporting to my audience) and push the other stories all back a day. What does that leave me? Well, I only got less than six hours sleep last night and I assure you that I am not going out to the garage to move any more lumber (that all got put away yesterday afternoon and was less taxing than I thought since the forklift managed to get it all placed in the garage and I only had to move it about five feet to still get the Tesla in the garage). That leaves me almost two hours to take a sunrise siesta and get my chi realigned for my zen-like travel state. Ohmmmmmmm.