Trippin’ on United

I am on a two-week trip that includes Montana and California. The Montana part of the trip has gone great, without any real problem.

The California part has not started off so good. I had to grab a United Airlines flight out of Bozeman, MT to get to CA. Of course, as I’ve said before, you can’t get in or out of Bozeman on a direct flight. Even if you want to get to Seattle directly you can’t get there without going somewhere else, even though getting to Bozeman or leaving Bozeman to another destination on Alaska Airlines would route you through Seattle.

Now I am not a big fan of DIA. I get fucked every time I have to fly there and this time was no exception. The flight out of Bozeman was delayed due to the in-bound flight being delayed. No big deal because I had a 2+ hour layover at DIA. I get to DIA and go through the usual gate-change crap. But now the flight is also delayed. Why? There isn’t any crew to fly the aircraft!!!! To top that off, the chick at the gate tells me that she can’t give me a seat assignment because they have over-sold the flight. Great. Is there another flight to SJC today? No? What am I supposed to do? They can get me to SFO, which isn’t too far away except that my car rental and return flight to TX are both out of SJC.

I then call up Budget to see if they can tweak my reservation so that I can pick the car up at SFO and return it to SJC (where my flight home is). That would allow me to get a confirmed seat on the SFO flight. The girl tells me that they are doing system maintenance and can’t look up or do any reservations. AT 3:00PM IN THE FREAKING AFTERNOON. That’s nice…. Thanks Budget.

Luckily, the aircraft we were supposed to be on got changed (why, I do not know) and we got another aircraft with more seats. At least I now had a ticket.

No we sit around for another hour and forty-five minutes past take-off time to get off the ground. But finally, we are off!!! Out the outbound, the aircraft hits some severe turbulence and the ride is a little sketchy, but I’ve been through far worse. I chill on the flight and as we are getting close the pilot comes on to tell us that due to the turbulence he is diverting to SFO for immediate inspection of the aircraft. I can SEE the SJC airport…just put the plane down!!! But no, we re-route to SFO.

They get our bags out on the carousel and tell us to proceed to bus area 4 to get a charter to take us all the way to SJC. Mind you, the flight crew hopped off the flight and right into a private limo and took off.

Now I call Budget again!! Basically I still want to do the same thing. Pick up at SFO and drop off at SJC because of getting stuck at SFO. The first guy I talked to said he couldn’t help and passed me to a supervisor. That guy was freaking useless. They wanted to charge me double the rate to rent the car that way. Fuck them.

So then I get on the bus and ride all the way back to SJC so that I can get my car. The bus ride wasn’t that bad because now it’s so late in the evening that there isn’t any traffic left.

I make it to get the car, and then make it to the hotel. TWELVE hours later. Yes, that’s right. It managed to take me just over twelve hours to get from Bozeman, MT to SJC.

I actually had a very interesting and nice dining experience at a Vietnamese restaurant near the hotel, though, and at least that was nice. This place served everything “family style” which is to say that you got a huge plate of veggies, your own mixers for sauce, your main course, a bowl of hot water and a plate of dehydrated rice paper. Basically, you put the rice paper into the bowl of water until it softened, then use the veggies and main course to make a wrap and scarf down. It was really good.

And I made it back to the hotel. Glad to be able to grab a hot shower and crash out…..but there wasn’t any freaking hot water. None. I call the lobby and complain. The guy looks into it and calls me back to tell me it will be hot in a little while. However, when I crawled out of bed at 6:00am there still wasn’t any hot water so I couldn’t get a shower. Great. Now I had to go teach class without a fresh shower.

And just to make sure things couldn’t get any better; none of my updated classroom materials had arrived electronically. That means that my presentations were older than (behind) the revisions the students have. Fuck it….I’ll wing it.