I suppose it you have a blog page you should post on it so I will start off the New Year with a post about the end of 2008. Paige and I have always wanted to go to New York for Christmas. Ice skating in Rockefeller Plaza, the Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center, snow lining the rooftops, trees, and walls, crisp cool air; it all sounds so quixotic. It WAS perfectly dreamy and more. I can’t imagine what the reality of living in New York is like, but I love visiting. It is so magical to me to go underground in one spot and emerge in another with so little effort, and there is so much to see that I never mind walking.
We started off the trip by missing our flight out of San Diego. I’m not sure how it happened because I looked at the clock at 4:50 am as I was putting on mascara and thought how perfectly on time we were. However we drove out of the garage at 5:36! Our flight left at 6:30 am, or so I thought. It really left at 6:18 am, our flight out of New York left at 6:30! The polite and sympathetic black man at the outside baggage check said, “Even if you were George W. Bush you wouldn’t make this flight.” We were all silent as we schlepped our bags inside to wait for our turn at the counter to find out if we would still be going to New York. At first she thought we could pay $75 each and take the flight connecting through San Francisco, but no, if we took that one we would have to pay $1090 per person. The look on our faces told her that was not an option so she presented us with our only option for getting to New York that day which was standby. No extra charge. With hope, a prayer, and silence we migrated our way through security to the United Airways desk to sign up for standby. Angels were with us and mercy was on our side. We not only got on, all three of us were sitting together.
Next stop Colorado where we were supposed to be meeting up with Byron. We had been texting back and forth so he was aware of our plight. When our plane landed in Colorado I turned on my phone to find a text from Byron. I responded and he responded back. I was so confused because he was supposed to be on a plane half way to New York. I still hadn’t quite connected the dots as we got off the plane and gasped in amazement when we saw him standing at our gate! His connecting flight was delayed because of bad weather in New York. We had caught up to our original flight! We went to the desk and put our names on the standby list for our original flight and waited for clearance from New York. At last it came but our names were not called for standby. We went to the desk to enquire thinking that we would be waiting for the next flight, but to our surprise the previous agent had ticketed us and left the tickets sitting on the counter. Paige and I were nearly skipping to the plane while thanking Don for not saying a single word about whose fault it was that we missed the flight, and for not yelling at us.
NEW YORK. I managed to get us rooms at the W Hotel near Grand Central Station. The rate was full price one night half price the next. Our previous experience in New York was very small rooms so we had braced ourselves for extra small quarters. Not so! The room was lovely and spacious and if you opened the window and looked left you could see the Chrysler building. Dinner that night was pizza at Grand Central Station and then we called it a day. A very long day, but we were there and all was well.
We started off the trip by missing our flight out of San Diego. I’m not sure how it happened because I looked at the clock at 4:50 am as I was putting on mascara and thought how perfectly on time we were. However we drove out of the garage at 5:36! Our flight left at 6:30 am, or so I thought. It really left at 6:18 am, our flight out of New York left at 6:30! The polite and sympathetic black man at the outside baggage check said, “Even if you were George W. Bush you wouldn’t make this flight.” We were all silent as we schlepped our bags inside to wait for our turn at the counter to find out if we would still be going to New York. At first she thought we could pay $75 each and take the flight connecting through San Francisco, but no, if we took that one we would have to pay $1090 per person. The look on our faces told her that was not an option so she presented us with our only option for getting to New York that day which was standby. No extra charge. With hope, a prayer, and silence we migrated our way through security to the United Airways desk to sign up for standby. Angels were with us and mercy was on our side. We not only got on, all three of us were sitting together.
Next stop Colorado where we were supposed to be meeting up with Byron. We had been texting back and forth so he was aware of our plight. When our plane landed in Colorado I turned on my phone to find a text from Byron. I responded and he responded back. I was so confused because he was supposed to be on a plane half way to New York. I still hadn’t quite connected the dots as we got off the plane and gasped in amazement when we saw him standing at our gate! His connecting flight was delayed because of bad weather in New York. We had caught up to our original flight! We went to the desk and put our names on the standby list for our original flight and waited for clearance from New York. At last it came but our names were not called for standby. We went to the desk to enquire thinking that we would be waiting for the next flight, but to our surprise the previous agent had ticketed us and left the tickets sitting on the counter. Paige and I were nearly skipping to the plane while thanking Don for not saying a single word about whose fault it was that we missed the flight, and for not yelling at us.
NEW YORK. I managed to get us rooms at the W Hotel near Grand Central Station. The rate was full price one night half price the next. Our previous experience in New York was very small rooms so we had braced ourselves for extra small quarters. Not so! The room was lovely and spacious and if you opened the window and looked left you could see the Chrysler building. Dinner that night was pizza at Grand Central Station and then we called it a day. A very long day, but we were there and all was well.
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