long and short - the weather ruined everything. I nearly didn't make it to NYC Sat morning due to United's unparalleled customer service. several morning flights to the west coast were canned, which meant 100s of people all in one line trying to re-book.
one line.
which means the folks who had real valid flights were in the same line, and, the one hour policy you may as well throw out the window. I showed up an hour early to an empty terminal (with no air conditioning, don't forget that - broken) UNTIL I got to United at the other end.
I don't know how many hundreds of people were milling around. it was worse chaos than Thanksgiving or Xmas.
I never check bags domestically so I should have been easy in and out. but United in their infinite wisdom doesn't separate the easy check-in kiosks from the main check-in area so it was a huge zoo there - you simply couldn't tell who was in the real line or who was in the kiosk line. it was that bad. like caged zoo animals - there were a lot of really ****ed off people.
I was almost panicking - and I don't panic about travel, ever. My Mom was going to be at LGA wondering where the hell I went and if I missed this flight God knows when they would put me on another one.
I assessed my choices and decided this was no time to be polite. sauve qui peut! I went to the "exit" of the kiosks and watched for someone who was almost done. I saw a guy putting his stuff away and I walked up to him and asked if he minded if I jumped in behind him. He obviously couldn't care less so I jumped in, swiped my card, 30 seconds later tix in hand RAN for the security. understand now that it took me a little while of debating (and adding to the milling around) before I made the drastic move so I was pushing it on time at this point. I never did enter the "line" because I could tell it was utterly pointless to even try.
I was the last person on the plane before they closed up. the clean fresh clothes I put on that morning were already sweaty due to the broken AC in the whole terminal and the many people swarming around.
the plane was supposed to be SRO. 100 seater. maybe 30 people on it - everyone else had missed their flight due to the FUBAR customer service. you ask yourself - have these airlines truly never seen this sort of thing happen before? wouldn't it make their lives easier if they hired someone to study crisis management? the same thing in Italy - it's almost as if they are surprised people actually showed up to be let on the airplane. "what is this, there are people here! they want to go somewhere? what are we to do? CROWD CONTROL!"
IT'S NOW 830 AM ON THE MORNING OF OUR GRAND ADVENTURE.
we made it there without event and Mom made it too but the entire wkd was pouring pouring rain. we had brief pockets of time when we could close the umbrella, in fact the evening wasn't too bad for a few hours. but needless to say all the things we planned became a hassle. we planned this to be a walking walking walking wkd - through the various parts of town... shopping, Empire State Building, Ferry to Statue of Libery, etc. all the things you want to do on a nice summer wkd in NYC. Central Park, Soho, and so forth. we ended up pretty damp and while we did go to some nice restos and yes we did walk and shop a little, not even remotely close to what I envisioned. forget about Central Park. and Ellis Island or anything. We did make it to WTC though, which moves me to tears each time (how could it not).
getting home was an even worse nightmare. long and short, I was supposed to be home at 530 PM and instead got in about 130 AM, in bed by 2 AM. we were the only flight to Dulles that wasn't cancelled. the rains were ungodly. I'll go into it later but I'm sure everyone has experienced this at least once - weather holdups. we sat on the plane for 2.5 hours EXPECTING to go, and then back to the gate to wait. the only good thing about that is you then start talking to everyone around you which was nice actually.
I am glad Mom and I got to spend a wkd together, and we are already talking about re-doing this...
more later, I'm tired just writing this!
