Seattle: The Trip That Almost Never Was
Jade and I finally made it to Seattle last night despite all odds. This trip is chock full of snafus!
It all starts yesterday when we were waiting on the bus to head downtown in order to catch the Airport Flyer. I look at our paper tickets to confirm the departure time and notice that my ticket doesn’t have my name on it but instead is issued to one Monica Rosales!!! This is obviously bad. Very bad. I’m neither female or Hispanic and am utterly clueless as to how this could happen. Jade and I had gone to the United counter at the airport a few weeks prior to convert our vouchers into bona fide, confirmed tickets. The vouchers had our names on them and were corroborated by our IDs. I even think the lady said “Shannon and James, have a nice trip!” when she handed our tickets to us, so it’s inconceivable that I’d end up with a ticket for a seat next to Jade without my name on it!
Our bus ends up being late which in turn makes us miss the Airport Flyer. Luckily there’s a cab sitting there, so we hop in. I suppose the savvy cabbies wait around that spot just for the unfortunates like us. He’s a chatty one and on the way to the airport he recounts his worst travel experience ever. It took him 56 hours to get from Germany to Austin, with multiple nights stayed in airport terminals due to delayed flights. His airline? United.
At the airport is where the real fun begins as I try to explain how I’m not really Monica, I don’t know who Monica is, and, no, we don’t have a friend named Monica who I’m trying to switch the ticket for because she couldn’t go on the trip. All this because “we had to have shown something with Monica’s name on it because it doesn’t make sense that anyone could get a whole name wrong.” As I said, these tickets were produced from vouchers with our names so I thought maybe that would offer proof. However, the voucher entries are destroyed in the system as soon as they are redeemed for tickets. After a few “I don’t know what to tell you”s, she finally came back to us and said she would take care of it. There was never any indication as to what went wrong or that she had evidence that we were telling the truth. I believe our adamance paid off and she just changed the name. Whew.
Our troubles, however, would not be over with just this snafu. Oh no. Standing in the security line, Jade realizes that she forgot her birth certificate. It’s understandable because it’s not something you normally bring on a trip, but since we’re going to Canada it is absolutely essential without a passport. Our shuttle across the border won’t even allow us on without it! It’s too late to go back, too late for someone to bring it to us at the airport. Besides, one roommate left for Vegas earlier than we were up that morning and the other was at work. We call a few friends before finally reaching someone who would hear our plight and help! He agrees to go by our house, climb to the second story to gain entry, and Fedex the birth certificate to our hotel in Seattle. Now we just have to cross our fingers and hope that the package makes it hear on time before our Monday afternoon shuttle. If not, we’ll be extending our stay in the Emerald City.
Of course, traveling to the Emerald City also proved to be fraught with snafus. Our 3-hour layover in Denver turned into 7 hours after not one, but two planes were rejected by the captain due to mechanical issues. Ah, United.
Well, I’m off to explore the city now. Hopefully everything will go smoothly from this point on, but I have a feeling this is just one of those trips that result in blogs like this. We’ll see…