CA Part 1: It Was the Worst of Times. (ie What Can Go Wrong, WILL)

"Trip" defined:

1. a journey or voyage: to win a trip to Paris.

2. Slang.
a. any stimulating or exciting experience: The class reunion was a real trip.
b. a period of time, experience, or lifestyle: Those early years in college were a bad trip.

My extended weekend trip to California definitely fits the definition!! And as Charles Dickens wrote in "A Tale of Two Cities," ... "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I hope by the time I finish this (and be prepared, this is destined to be my longest post yet!) you will see what I mean! Where do I even begin?!?

In my quest to visit all the MLB parks, I have to do a little research to the parks that are close. That means that a little planning has to be involved, and a little flexibility to be able to make it work. I checked the schedules when they were posted in April, and determined that last weekend was my opportunity to get to both the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles at Anaheim Angels (I've already been to the LA Dodgers). So, Katie and I booked our trip there. The plan: fly into San Diego Thursday morning, get there in time to rent a car and drive to Petco Park for the afternoon game vs. the Baltimore Orioles, go to the temple, then head up to Kristin & Kurt's. Friday night we'd go to the Angels game, which included fireworks, and then we'd see the LA Temple and hang out with friends and on the beach for the rest of the weekend. In theory, a great plan. In reality, however ... not so much.

Katie and I got up bright and early on Thursday (actually dark and early - 5am) to make it to the airport for our flight. Jenny dropped us off, and we waited in the LONG line for United check-in. I was already apprehensive about flying United, since last time I flew that airline, they lost my luggage going to Boston, but they had the cheapest - and direct flight to San Diego, so that was the obvious choice. Finally it was our turn at the check-in kiosk. I swiped my credit card, verified the passengers, and hit "check in" ... "We are sorry, you cannot check in. Please see an attendant." Um ... what? Apparently if you are checking luggage (which you basically have to now with all the regulations), TSA requires you to do so no less than 45 min before your flight. We were at 44 minutes. Seriously - ONE MINUTE late. Apparently all the people who are always saying "if you have a flight before x time, come now" were not working that day, because no one informed us of that.

Ok fine, they told us to go to the 'future reservations' desk and they would help us. We waited in that line. The lady told us we were in the wrong line - well after me telling her that is where they told us to go and what had happened she finally said that she could help us. That was nice of her. That was the only nice thing she did though. She put us on a standby for a flight to LA at 9:30, and then hoped we would make it on a flight from LA to San Diego, or we could just drive if we had to ... and told us if we didn't make it on, then we could pay $100 to change our flight to one that left at 4 something. But she reassured us that we were at the top of the standby list. Well, the flight to LA was overbooked, we found out that we were really #7 & 8 on the standby list, and even people who were confirmed on it didn't make it on. We went back to another agent and the most we could get from his mumbled tones was to find out that the first lady had lied to us. There was no 4pm flight, but it arrived in San Diego at 4:30, and it was totally full, so we couldn't pay $100 to get on it. We couldn't pay anything.

Finally we met a very nice United woman who helped us out. She put us on standby for the San Diego direct flight at 2:40, but confirmed us on a 5:40 flight that connected through Denver. So we were sure to get a flight out. There wasn't time to leave the airport because we had to be back by 1 for the 2:40 flight so we could wait through security and everything, so we went to Harry's Tap Room for breakfast. French toast and omelets. Yum. Then we walked around the airport. I got a Diet Coke. I needed some caffeine - and there was no Dr. Pepper to be found in the entire airport, only Coke products. Then the 2:40 flight was delayed until 4:10. So we waited. And waited. It was very boring. And then that flight was overbooked, no chance of us getting on.

Back to the United counter to get our boarding passes to Denver. There we were met with an extremely rude ticketing agent who informed us that the other agent had booked us on a flight with an illegal connection. I guess you can't confirm anyone on a flight that has less than a 50 minute connection, and ours was 30 minutes. Luckily the gates were close, so they figured we would be ok. At this point I didn't care - I just wanted to get out of the Dulles airport!! She told us we were very lucky, and that if it would have been her, she wouldn't have helped us, because she 'follows the rules.' Well, we were glad that she wasn't there earlier then! ha ha She reworked everything so we had boarding passes for both flights, and we were on our way. Not before I received a very long lecture on not missing our flights and how we should have been charged for the changes - the $100 change fee PLUS the fare increase ... "You might as well just sleep at the airport if you are not going to be able to make it to your flight on time next time." Wow. Ok we WERE at the airport on time, in fact, over an hour early. If your airline would have people actually helping customers, this wouldn't have happened. If, if, if - there are a million what-if's that we finally stopped thinking about it because it wasn't worth it. It was just frustrating that everyone assumed we were irresponsible and talked to us in the most condescending and belittling tones possible!

Back to the terminals at Dulles. We walked through every terminal in the airport. We met a nice woman on the people mover who worked at the jewelry store and she told us where some good restaurants were. We browsed around Brookstone and I found a massager that you strap around your stomach that we played with for awhile. We were very bored, obviously. We visited all 3 Borders stores. We each bought a book that I can't remember the name of because a few chapters into it I realized that I didn't want to keep reading it. I returned it and the lady laughed when I told her that it only took me a few minutes to realize that it was too trashy for my liking. She didn't argue with that and gave me my money back. I spent the next little while on the phone - with the car rental company and the hotel, informing them that we would be there later than planned on. Of course this now meant that we were missing the game in San Diego since its was an afternoon game - and we bought our tickets online from Ticketmaster, so that now became a sunk cost of the trip (yet another one). We had lunch/dinner/whatever it was by that point at Potbelly's and then headed over to catch our flight.

5pm - 11 hours after arriving at Dulles airport, we get on a plane to go to Denver. We have seats next to each other, and we're off. Well - after a 40 minute delay because of some thunder & lightening around us. It was a pretty rough start to the flight and I felt very nauseated. Then I felt like I might pass out. Ok maybe it wasn't really that bad but I was doing my best to keep it together and not have to illicit the help of the tiny barf bag in my seat pocket! I was fine though - deep breathing and ginger ale helped :) Of course since we left late, we were late getting into Denver - where we already had a tight connection. We RAN off the plane and to the next gate, got on the plane, where they closed the doors shortly after we arrived. Then we sat there for 45 minutes while we heard "Hi folks, this is your captain ... we are having some computer problems and the mechanical team is running some diagnostic tests to see if we can run with only 1 or 2 of our 3 computers ... we will keep you posted." That is comforting! We did take off though - and despite some plane shaking (I was really scared for a minute!), we made it. But that still meant we were - not surprisingly - late landing in San Diego. But we were there - finally!

We were very excited that we didn't have to wait for our baggage to arrive since it preceded us by a good many hours. Then we found out it was at the commuter terminal in another building because it had come from a flight in LA. So we had to get our rental car first, then come back to the airport and get our bags. Whatever. We got our rental car - they were oh so nice and upgraded us from a Ford Focus to a PT Cruiser ... wah-hoo, right?!? ha ha Then back to get our luggage, and off to the hotel. We were hoping to meet up with Katie's friend Jordan that night, but after all the headaches of getting there and the delays, he ended up getting home from his night out before we even made it to our hotel!

We pulled into our destination - Paradise Point Resort & Spa (a great Hotwire find!), and felt like finally, we were going to be able to relax in a nice place and get some much needed R&R! We waited our turn in line and Katie gave them our information. Here's how the conversation went: "Actually, we had a large group extend their stay through tonight, so we are all booked. We have made arrangements for you to stay at another hotel this evening." Um ... I laughed. Right then and there. Of course they were full! Why would we possibly think that we were actually done with this ordeal already? The hotel they sent us to was called "The Sea Lodge" in La Jolla - about 20 min away. We were not the only ones they sent there. The lady in front of us was ranting and raving and asking for the manager's business card so she could talk to him. We were so done with fighting people that we figured we'd deal with it the next day, after a good night's sleep, since by this point we'd almost been up for 24 hours.

The MapQuest directions they gave us were incomplete - it was like a screen shot that they forgot to expand. So luckily we had my GPS and found the hotel from the address they provided - luckily, since the name of it didn't register anything. We pulled up to the address and couldn't see anything that said "Sea Lodge" anywhere ... it said "La Jolla Shores" ... I asked one of the bellmen, who informed us that they changed the name about two months ago. That information would have been slightly useful ... they were nice to us when we checked in, and gave us keys to our room. There was a man behind us who was in the same predicament. His name was Richard and he was a lawyer (as was his wife, who was in the car with their 2 year old) - he gave us his cell phone number and told us to call him the next day so we could talk about what happened and get to the bottom of it.

Off to our room for a good night's sleep - finally! Except that the beds were hard as rock, the walls were paper thin, and there were lots of people coming in and out (probably from the hotel that overbooked us all) for another hour or two. But it was a bed - and Paradise Point paid for the room and contacted Hotwire to refund the money we had paid for their hotel. So, at least we were not out any money!

Friday Morning. Wake up - its a beautiful new day and we are ready to have our luck turn around. A good night's sleep does wonders for the spirits in these kinds of situations! So we got ready at the hotel. I made a few phone calls - to the Padres - to find tickets for the night's game. Unfortunately for those seeking tickets, this was the first time that the Boston Red Sox had ever come to San Diego (thank you interleage play!) and the entire series was SOLD OUT. Those are the worst possible words I could hear at that moment in time. I kept my cool though, and tried on the Padres Ticketmaster website from the hotel lobby. The site kept timing out and I couldn't access it. I later found out this was because they released a select few tickets at 9am on Friday morning - apparently I was racing the masses to get our hands on those tickets. Once I did get the site to work, however, the hotel security and firewalls blocked the ticket search from working correctly. So, I decided that we would deal with it after the temple.

We got in the car and headed to the temple. About 5 minutes later I realized that I had left the temple cards in my bag at the hotel - so we turned around. This was about the same time that my GPS decided to run out of battery juice. No problem, right? I had my car charger, plugged it in, and we were off ... or not. Apparently Fox Rental disengages the cigarette plugs in all of their cars to stop people from smoking in them ... and also stopping anyone from charging anything in their cars. Good thing I brought my regular phone charger rather than my car charger! So we were GPS-less, and headed back to the hotel, figuring we could call the temple to find out how to get there. At that point we decided to check out of the hotel so we didn't have to come back. Katie called the manager of the Paradise Point Resort, Sandi, and sweet talked her into giving us a room that night for $99 (regularly $400) for all the hassle we'd had to go through with them changing our hotels and everything. We hadn't talked to Richard the lawyer yet but figured if we could get a night out of them, we'd call it good. While Katie was on the phone, I was frantically searching San Diego's Craigslist for anyone who had tickets to the game. I called a couple, and finally got ahold of a guy named Jason who had 2 amazing seats for $90. He couldn't hold them for me, so I told him I was on my way - he gave me directions, I grabbed Katie (who was still on the phone) and we headed downtown to meet Jason at the Wells Fargo building.

He and I met in the street, he told me that the tickets were $90 each, not for the pair, so we walked over to the ATM (since he didn't want to take a check - and I can't blame him for that one - its easy to get burned on craigslist) and we made the exchange. He was impressed that we'd come so far for baseball games, and was very sympathetic to the trauma we had been through up to that point (I gave him a very Reader's Digest version). Thanks for the tickets, have fun, see ya. As I'm walking back to the car, I look at the tickets and notice that they are for Sunday afternoon's game. Uh oh. I called Jason and told him what I'd discovered. He was shocked, told me he'd come back and meet me and get the right tickets. I met him in the street, he took the tickets back, and pulled out his wallet. I was confused for half a second until he pulled out his driver's license and handed it to me as collateral so I knew he would come back.
Smart. And trustworthy - I appreciated that. It would have been a great scam for him to pull to take my $180 and give me tickets to the wrong game and then run off! But he was a good guy, so we were ok. Until he called and said that he didn't actually have the tickets for that night's game. He was a season ticket holder and had them all on his computer - but for some reason he couldn't access his home email account at work because of the servers he had to go through. So ... we had some options ...

1. We could take the tickets and go on Sunday ... we wouldn't be in San Diego anymore.
2. He had tickets to Saturday's game ... we wouldn't be in San Diego anymore then either.
3. He could give me my money back, give me gas money, and phone numbers for other Craigslist listings for the tickets ... that's what we settled on.

He met me back on the street and gave me the money back, money for gas, and a sticky note with a couple other phone numbers on it. He felt awful and apologized profusely. Then he gave us directions on how to get out of downtown, and we parted ways. I called the first number - the tickets were gone. I called the second number - and Mark had 2 ticktes in right field, but they were kind of obstructed view from the old building out there. Ok that's fine, we don't care at this point! He told us where he'd be that we could pick the tickets up and we tried to find it. Only after we returned to the car rental and worked with the mechanic to test all of the cars on the lot to see if any of them would work with my charger. No dice. So we got back in our PT Cruiser and met Mark at a Starbucks to make the ticket exchange. Whew. We had tickets to the game. We were going. Hallelujah! Maybe our luck had finally turned around ...