I love to travel.  I spent this week with my sister near Phoenix, AZ.  I say I love to travel, but I really didn’t want to drive two days across three states by myself to get there, so I flew.  Bad mistake.  I left on Saturday out of Oklahoma City and flew to Houston where I had a one-hour layover.  I didn’t make my connection.  Between Hurricane Patricia, mechanical problems, and then sitting on the tarmac to burn off excess jet fuel because we were too heavy, my connection took off without me.

I made connections again once I got to Houston.  I was not alone.  There were 30 of us flying standby.  Another plane was also late because the pilot did not show up on time.  Maybe his plane was late?  Anyway I was given two boarding passes.  One for 3 hours later and one for 6 hours later.  I MIGHT be able to get on one of those planes heading for Phoenix.  I got acquainted with the other standby passengers and we called ourselves Standby Buddies.  When the standby travelers were called, I got lucky and my name was at the top of the list.  In other words, I only waited three hours instead of the six most of the rest of the Standby Buddies waited.  There were thirty of us – only three got on the first plane.  I don’t know if the others are still waiting in Houston or finally got a connection out.

I texted the bad news to my family and my sister waited patiently on the other end.  When I finally made that last couple-of-hour-hop to Phoenix, my bag was nowhere to be found.  But the airline would deliver it to my sister’s house an hour and a half away within 4-6 hours. Hah!  I called several times and stayed up late waiting for the delivery.  I was finally told it would be there by 7:30 in the morning.  Wrong, it wasn’t.  I called again.  I was told 4-6 hours.

“Four to six hours from when?” I demanded. “You’ve been saying that for two days!”

Finally I was put in touch with the delivery driver of the baggage.  He said he could have it to me by 11:30 that morning.  I told him we would not be there; we had lunch reservations miles away.  We finally agreed that he would put it behind the pillar at the house if I left a note on the door signed by me.  When I got home around 5:30, the bag was sitting behind the pillar more than 24 hours later than when I landed.

The rest of the week has been great.  I spent time with my sister and brother-in-law, ate out a lot, saw her kids, gambled in a casino, and met some friends for lunch and shopping.  We even visited a museum and archeological site.

But the flight home was worse.  The plane that was to take off at 1:45 was late picking me up and didn’t take off until 4:00 so it changed the entire day. Instead of traveling from Phoenix to Denver I traveled from Phoenix to Houston – and that plane was late.  I finally crawled into bed around 2:30 am after my husband waited in baggage claim for me.  But the bag was there that time!

I love to travel.