Monday, 19 August 2013

Grace Odyssey 2013: Fiasco II

 
Total travel gear. Light is lovely.


I’m nervous to fly out of Cedar Rapids. I’ve done it three times, and in two of those instances it was a second try that followed a failed first attempt due to cancelled flights. Once it was the weather, a blizzard, no one was getting out that day. This time there was a “minor” mechanical issue that was just a short delay at first. The delay became almost three hours before they cancelled it outright. Now if they’d done that sooner, I could have caught my connecting flights and gotten where I was going on time. The original route was CR-Chicago-LAX-Rarotonga, and there could have been any number of ways to get to LAX by 10 PM for that one crucial 10 hour flight that only goes once a week. Come on, I was at the airport in CR before noon! But no. Delays upon delays ate up my six hour buffer time, the flight to Chicago was cancelled, and I had to spend about an hour and a half on the phone with Air New Zealand to book a new route: CR-Denver-LAX-Auckland-Raro. This involves six extra hours of flight time, ten extra hours of layover, oh, and did I mention arriving two and a half days late? Ah well. Though one ticket agent informed me it was impossible, at least I’m on track (at time of writing) to get to Raro before my cousin’s wedding and not after. And, importantly, I got to spend most of two extra days with my very good friend Chila. That was a jolly good compensation for all the headaches and tears and fears that I might not make it to the big event.

No comments: