lesson learned - OR - adventures in air travel - OR - why i hate united
it was a huge leap of faith, but who am i if not adventurous? actually, the moment monica dropped me off at the airport and sputtered away, i realized i had failed to write down her phone number, you know, just in case. the reality of this tiny oversight hit hard last night as i flew into LAX to catch my jump down to san diego. the 10p flight had blinking red (why is it always so ominous in the blinking and the red?) departure time of 12:16a. actually, as i watched it, the departure time slowly climbed... 12:16, 12:32, 12:49... before it registered the 1AM mark, i hightailed it to the nearest counter and was joyfully told there was another flight leaving right now at another gate. with speedy feet, i made my way over there, threw in a couple of "but what about my checked bags??" to the already-flustered gate-attendant, and made my way onto the tiny plane. a little delayed but on our way, we get to take-off position only to be turned around and told that the particular plane we were on wouldn't be able to take off again from san diego once it was there, and it had other places to go... so sorry, get off, good luck.

i did what little negotiating i could at the ticket counter (wait for my original flight? rent a car and take the hit?) and was given the ominous BUS option. in the meantime, my luggage question hadn't been answered, and i had no way of getting a hold of monica since i didn't know her phone number, or even my own home phone number (i never use it!). in fact, i realized i only had 5 san diego phone numbers memorized: my parents, my work, doc, poncho, and sensei (the only one who would have had monica's number, but he was asleep at that point anyway). oh, and guess what? LAX doesn't have wifi, so all the lovely people with the lovely laptops were useless to me. i did manage to befriend a lady who let me email from her cell phone a very cryptic message to monica: it's britt. on bus. will take cab home. (it had to be short, she was getting on a plane).

in the meantime, where are the bags?? they're on the luggage turnstile waiting for their owners to throw them on the bus. that is, MOST of them are there... one particular one happened to be in san francisco. seems the geniuses operating this whole thing took the SAN on my luggage tag to mean SFO rather than its intended san diego. awesome, i didn't need that underwear anyway.

2 1/2 hours later, i arrive in san diego to a deserted commuter terminal 1 bag short and 3 hours overdue. i filed my baggage claim and asked the security officer to get me a taxi, where i pointedly told the guy "look, i'm going to normal heights. you either need to take credit or it had better be less than $15, cuz' that's all i have." he was nice enough to let my $30 fare be only 15 bucks, and finally, i was home.

other than that, hawaii was great! next time i'll have to tell you about how i got 1 1/2th place at the tournament...