Powerthirst

The unfriendly skies

Ah...summer. A time for rest, relaxation, and travel. Unless you fly through Texas....

Daniel and I planned a trip to California after realizing that there was no way we could afford to travel to Hong Kong to see his father. Although the trip to Hong Kong would have been nice, after our experiences with the airlines this past week, I think that I'm quite happy that we didn't attempt to make it around the world.

Daniel has a few good friends out in California who have been out to visit us and who also flew out for our wedding last December. We finally were able to make plans to visit Chuck and Sean and also see Eddie for a few hours too. But, how long would you say it might take one to travel to San Francisco from Florida? I've heard about 5 hours or so. Well, after this trip, you might want to reconsider WHERE your connection takes place.

We set off last Tuesday to San Francisco. I was quite excited since the last time I was there was almost 20 years ago and I didn't remember much from that trip. We arrived at the Tampa airport at about 2pm ( a little early since we wanted to make sure that we could get seats next to each other). We waited around, had a drink, and then headed over to our gate. After passing through security we saw that our flight was delayed (due to weather in Texas) so we looked for a quite place to sit -which ended up being quite a long ways from our gate. As it grew closer to our "boarding" time, we headed for our gate. Daniel decided to use the loo one last time before boarding. As I was standing and waiting, I decided to check the monitors. It turns out that our flight to San Francisco (connecting through Texas) had been more than delayed - it was now canceled due to weather. I stood there alone slightly in awe wondering what in the world had happened. As Daniel approached I told him the not so good news. He managed to find a short line where he was able to finally able to talk to an agent. The agent told us to go back down to ticketing. So, we were off- back to the terminal to "check in" yet again.

As we were standing there trying to do something about our canceled flight, I realized that our luggage was probably lost in some black hole of canceled flights and that we should probably fetch it. While Daniel stood in line, I ventured downstairs to baggage claim to look for it. I found it and came back up to stand in line for at least another 45 minutes. While standing in line we came up with a killer plan to start a business - but that's our secret. Finally we made it to the front of the line. I must say that the staff was very nice to work with. She managed to get us on a flight with a different airline through Las Vegas - leaving at 9:15 pm. It was about 6:00 pm at this point and we had been at the airport since 2pm. So, with many hours to kill before our new departure time, we decided to have dinner at the revolving restaurant at the airport hotel which overlooks the airport runways. It is quite a nice view and was much better than eating fast food from the terminal.

We finally boarded our plane and were off. The flight was about 4 1/2 hours and the plane was an old America West plane that had been repainted. The seats were super uncomfortable and my back was killing me the entire way. We arrived in Las Vegas around midnight (their time) so it was around 2:00 am for us. Our next flight was to San Francisco. We arrived late - around 2:00 am Pacific time (5:00 am for us) and then had to hike quite a ways to get our rental car. To make a long story short, we finally arrived at our hotel at 3:00 am (pacific time) which was 6:00 am our time. We were exhausted and delirious at this point. We were so happy to finally go to sleep- no matter how uncomfortable our bed was.

We woke up fairly early the next morning - around 8:30 and started to get ready for our day in the city. We took the trolley car down to Pier 39 and then met up with Sean and Chuck for lunch. The weather is just amazing in California. Warm in the sun, but cold in the shade - in the middle of the summer! Later that evening we had plans to meet up with Eddie and to go to dinner. We had quite an adventure in San Francisco but had to get back to the hotel to get a good night's sleep before heading up to Napa the next day.



Daniel and I woke early to start our drive to Napa. We drove over the golden gate bridge and took the scenic route. It was beautiful! We arrived at the Silverado Resort in Napa and met our limo driver there in preparation for our day of wine tasting. We had such a good time and then when we were finished we checked in to our posh condo. The next day we were off again to San Jose with a lunch stop in Sausalito. We arrived safely to Chuck's apartment building where we would be staying for the next two days.


We went down to Monterey the next day and did the 17 mile drive along the coast. It was beautiful and the weather once again was perfect. For our final evening we had an assortment of cheese and crackers to go with the wonderful wines that we had purchased in Napa.


We went to bed around midnight and then the next morning it was time to travel again. We had a 9:30 flight out of San Francisco so we left San Jose around 6:15. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and we watched airplanes land and take off while waiting to board our plane to go home.

We boarded on time and I was anxious to get home since I had to start teaching the following day (summer school). We were in a fairly new plane that was MUCH more comfortable than the plane we were on out to Vegas so I was very thankful. However, when we were approaching our destination (where we would be making our connection- TEXAS, again) the pilot informed us that there was severe weather again at the airport and that we would be circling the airport for a bit. Not long after he informed us that the airport was not taking any arrivals. The pilot decided to fly us to Tulsa and after landing he actually let us get off the plane. There was just enough time for me to stand in line and get some lunch and water for us. Soon after we were back up flying to Texas when the pilot informed us that it was safe to land in Texas since there had been planes landing for the past hour. This is when both Daniel and I looked at eachother wondering why we had even gone to Tulsa since we had been there for what seemed like less than 2 hours. We finally arrived in Texas around 6:00 pm when we had orginally been scheduled to catch our connection at 3:45.

We deplaned and checked the monitors and realized that our flight home had been delayed quite a bit. So there was no rush. I was getting a little nervous that we'd arrive home much later than our scheduled 7:15 pm arrival time, but what could I do? We took our time getting to our gate only to see that our gate's monitor only read something about a flight to Seattle. There was a huge problem at the airport - probably weather related - but who knows exactly what. We sat around for hours waiting to find out from which gate we would actually leave. It turns out that there was a problem with us getting on the plane we were supposed to leave from gate 26, so they put us on the flight leaving at 9:30. What a mess. At this point it was so late that there was no way we'd get home at a decent hour. We ended up getting into Tampa a little after 2:00 am and we literally walked in the door to our house at 3:00 am and made it to bed by 3:30 am. Which, might not have been a problem had we not needed to get up for work.

Needless to say when the alarm went off at 6:15 am we were beyond tired. We had less than 3 hours sleep and were a bit jet-lagged on top of that. I would have never imagined that we would have been delayed by 6 hours coming home and by 5 hours going out. So, all in all we were traveling for about 15 hours on the way to San Francisco and about 12 hours to get home.

Who said that it's only about 5 hours to California? Our advice : avoid Texas in the summer!