Warning: Whine Alert

I usually make it a point not to complain on my blog or on facebook–but today, things are different. This has been the worst day EVER, and because I suddenly have 7 hours at the airport with nothing to do, I’m going to tell you exactly how I got here….

I arrived at the airport in New Zealand exactly 27 hours ago. I should have landed in Houston 10 minutes ago. But instead, I’m stinky, cranky and starving…sitting in a corner at LAX feeling sorry for myself. Believe it or not, my 14 hour flight was pretty darn good. I watched a couple movies, got some sleep, and we even landed a couple of minutes early. I thought the 2.5 hours I had to get to my connecting flight would be plenty of time until I turned the corner into the immigration area. It was a sea of hundreds of people and I was at the very back. After an hour and a half of snaking around the room and scooting my ginormous carry on, I had finally reached the front. I knew it would be close, but it seemed like I would make it. When the next desk opened up I practically ran up there and the guy looked me in the face and then reached up and turned off his green light. He said “sorry, my shift is over”. This was the first of many times in the day I thought to myself, “am in a movie or something? maybe candid camera?”

Okay, whatever, I’ll just go to the next one. Nope, somehow I got shuffled back behind 10 more people. So from there I got to wait another 5 minutes behind people who live in LA, when I had to make a flight that was leaving in 45 minutes. Anyway, I eventually made it through and sprinted over to the baggage area to get my large suitcase and our enormous pop-up display for work. It’s a really awkward hard case that’s about 4×3 and 60lbs. I spotted them both pretty quickly, start walking backwards and pulling them (it’s the only way it works) and I was on my way.
This is when it really goes downhill. I noticed a blood like substance dripping from my suitcase. It took about .2 seconds for me to realize that it wasn’t blood–it was wine. I just started crying instantly. So much for the $4 protective wine bubble wrap I bought at one of the wineries. I’m such a sucker. So I run over to customs in tears and open up my bag to assess the damage. I’m still not exactly sure if everything is ruined, but the first thing I saw was my favorite cream cardigan tie-dyed with Merlot. Fabulous. Now I’m tearing up just thinking about it. Emotional much? Luckily I met the nicest man on the face of the earth in the immigration line and he was right behind me witnessing all of this in customs now too. He ran over and grabbed me a cart and helped me to regain composure. He was an angel. So here we go through customs…30 minutes til wheels up. I made it through pretty quickly and then David (the nice guy) helped me get directions to the Continental desk to check-in and recheck my bags. I gave him a hug (yes, a stranger…but he was so nice) and I was off.

The terminal was u-shaped, so the lady said I could take a shortcut–cross the street, cross a parking lot, cross another street–and bam, Continental. So off I went…kind of. In the middle of 4 lanes of busy traffic I hit a bump and everything went flying. At that point I considered just giving up…leaving it all in the middle of the road in LA and getting on that plane. All I wanted (and still want) was to be home. That’s when another amazingly nice citizen got out of his truck and helped me repile everything onto the cart. Embarrassing! About 15 minutes and 4 crashes later, I finally ditched the cart and just started running backwards with the bags. When I showed up at the continental desk I know I looked ridiculous…dirty, sweating and too old to be crying. Even more embarrassing. So I told the girl at the desk I was there for the 5:05 flight and she just shook her head–the flight hadn’t left yet, but it was too late to check my bags. I told her I didn’t care if the bags didn’t come for 3 weeks (everything was basically runied anyway), but she said /i couldn’t travel without them. But don’t worry, it doesn’t stop here 🙂 So she put me on standby for a 6:25 flight–not bad. I would still make it home by 11. So fast forward to 7:45 (the flight was delayed over an hour)…I was 4th on the list and after filling the plane with the ticketed passengers they started calling off names on the standby list. Hallelujah! After they called the third name I started to get my things together knowing I was next. Then she calls out a man’s name. WHAT THE HECK? The guy next to me gets up and runs over, so excited to be going home tonight. Worst of all, this was the same guy who arrived at the check-in desk 10 minutes after I had…he had missed the same 5:05 flight and clearly should’ve been after me on the list. I found out later that he was an ElitePass member so he got bumped up before me. I mean seriously, talk about the luck I have?? This has to be some kind of mean joke. As I type this, there’s a police officer with a drug dog circling my area. I would probably have to make this into a movie if it goes that direction.

Anyway, here I am…waiting for my 12:30am flight. If all goes as planned I will be home by 5:30 tomorrow morning. Pretty awesome huh? There are three things I want to do when I get home…1. See Chris and Hazel, 2. Take a shower, 3. Brush my teeth. It’s the simple things.

Writing this actually made me feel better, phew. And I promise to never post anything this annoying EVER again. Oh and I have lots of great pictures and stories to share from the good parts of my trip 🙂 Eventually!