I have decided that the forces in the airline universe are working against me. Really, it could just be life in general...either way, I don't like it. I don't really believe in luck...I believe you create opportunities or your decisions cause you to miss them. But I have been feeling extremely unlucky lately...
Let me explain.
Situation 1:
A few months ago, I found out that Warrior Dash is coming to Tulsa. I have always wanted to do one of these events, and I was so excited! It is scheduled for September 24th, which worked out great, because it would be just a few days after I returned from my internship in California. I waited to sign up because we were in the process of trying to get a group together, and you have to sign up for a particular time...they had waves every 30 minutes starting at 11am.
My good friend Sarah lives in Panama City, FL, and I have been looking for a good opportunity to go visit her. She had told me about a relatively new airline that has direct flights from Destin (about an hour from Panama City) to Little Rock (about 2 hours and 45 minutes from my house), sometimes for really cheap! (I know right now it seems entirely unrelated to Warrior Dash...bear with me...). A couple months ago, I happened to be browsing on the website for Vision Airlines hoping for an opportunity to go see her. I found a flight that left Saturday evening, September 24th, and returned Tuesday evening, September 27th...all for under $200 round trip, including taxes and fees! Something in my head told me that I had something else going on the 24th, but I couldn't for the life of me think of what it was at the time...so I somehow convinced myself that I was thinking of September 21st, when I am going to the Taylor Swift concert in Tulsa. I decided September 24th was free (I really should get better about putting stuff down in my calendar...), and booked my flight!
Soon after I realized that Warrior Dash was the same day as my flight. At first, I thought I could still manage to make both...if I did the 11am wave for the Warrior Dash in Tulsa, I thought I could still make the 4.5 hour drive to Little Rock by 6pm to check in for my flight. It's only about 3.23 miles, so I thought, "Heck, I'll be finished in 35 minutes!"...but then my sister brought me back to reality when she reminded me that I had to consider the fact that it was not only 3.23 miles...it was 3.23 miles through a crazy obstacle course. It would probably end up taking me at least 3 hours to complete. This left me roughly 4 hours to shower and drive to Little Rock. Yeah, not happening. So I was bummed, but I accepted the fact that I could not do Warrior Dash; at least I was going to the beach and to visit my good friend Sarah, who also happens to be my hair stylist, and I am in dire need of a haircut.
A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from the airline stating that there had been a schedule change to my flight, and that I needed to call and find out my new itinerary. I called, and they had pushed my outgoing flight back to 8:30pm. Initially, I got really excited, because this meant I could still do Warrior Dash! I went back and checked...and the 11:00 wave was full. Not only that, but they had also added a 10:00 and 10:30 wave...also full. Bummer. The 1:00 wave was the earliest one available, and back in the same boat I started in...I couldn't swing it. Even more bummed, I went on content with the fact that I was still going to the beach and to visit my good friend Sarah.
Yesterday morning, I got super excited when I realized that I was exactly 1 month from my trip to Florida! I even posted on Facebook about it. Sarah was excited too. Then, just a mere two hours later, I receive the email of death. I get the same email from the airline that I did a couple weeks ago. I call. I wait on hold forever for them to actually answer my phone call in the order it was received. Finally, a man answers, and gives me the awful news: My flight to Florida has been cancelled. Apparently the airline cancelled all of the flights on that route after September 15th. Now I want to cry. My sister and friends signed up for the 1:00 wave for Warrior Dash, which is now full. So now, I have no vacation to Florida to see my good friend Sarah, AND I have no friends to do Warrior Dash with. At least the airline is refunding my money...other than that, I am having trouble seeing the good in this situation...
Situation 2:
I booked our rooms for our wedding-moon stay in Cozumel in May 2012 back in May of this year. Airfare was not available yet, so I didn't book that at the same time. When it did finally come out in late June/early July (I can't remember exactly), it was $476 per person. Considering I had just flown to Cancun last summer and the tickets were only $298 per person, I had a hard time spending that much on our flights. I thought, "Surely they will go down between now and May." I had actually read something online that said airfare is generally at it's lowest point approximately 6 months before travel. So I had been watching airfare prices like crazy lately, just waiting for it to go down. I had come to terms with the fact that airfare is simply much more expensive that it was a year ago, and decided that if it dropped below $450 per person, I would go ahead and make my purchase. About 3 weeks ago, the cost of our plane tickets went up to $513 per person. I wanted to kick myself. I even looked up random dates, anywhere from now until April, to see if there was a particular time that airfare was cheaper. Nope. $513 was actually the cheapest airfare to Cozumel for the next 9 months. I was so mad at myself that I didn't buy it earlier...it would've saved us $37 per person, or $74 total. When you're paying for a wedding on your own, $74 can make a big difference somewhere else...
So I decided to bite the bullet and pay the $513 for the stupid airfare in case it went up again. I bought my plane ticket 2 days ago from Continental. I checked the prices today, and found one on American for $474...it was over $600 two days ago. REALLY??!
I guess I just need to not look at the prices, ever again.
So now I have my overpriced plane ticket to Cozumel, and no plane ticket to Florida. I also don't get to do Warrior Dash, because I can't find anyone to do it with me that's not already signed up for a wave that's full.
Okay, I'm done complaining. Now I'm just going to go pout :(
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Sweet Home Oklahoma - Part 1
Oklahoma is by no means God's Country (a.k.a. Arkansas), but when your family is there, and you have been living in the desert for the past 8 weeks, practically isolated because you don't really know anyone and therefore have no friends, it is a close second :) I don't think I've ever been so excited to go home for a visit in my life. It was good to be home :)
I am calling this Part 1, because I get to go home for another visit in just a couple of weeks over Labor Day weekend...looking forward to that one too :) One of my best friends, Jesse, is getting married that weekend, and I bought a plane ticket to go home for that...and she scheduled her Bachelorette Party for two weeks before the wedding, which worked out great, because I had a 3-day-weekend this past weekend and was off Friday! Jesse was nice enough to offer to pay for my plane ticket for her wedding, but I really wanted to buy it myself - so she agreed, and offered to buy my plane ticket to come home for her Bachelorette Party instead. I felt really bad to ask her to pay for that, but there was no way I could afford two plane tickets so close together when I have been watching our pennies very tightly in order to get the truck paid off...so we compromised :) She and her husband-to-be were very generous and paid for my one-way flight home for the weekend, and I had built up enough airline miles for a one-way flight home...so I only had to pay $5 in taxes. It saved us both some money, and made it where I could come celebrate with her, so I think it was a good compromise :) It worked out really nicely, because Friday also happened to be my sister's birthday, so I got to celebrate with her too!
I found a good deal on a flight from Orange County, CA to Tulsa. In case you weren't aware, airfare is outrageous right now...and flying out of the airports near Ridgecrest are even more outrageous. Google told me that the John Wayne Airport was 135 miles and a 3 hour and 1 minute drive from my house. I figured the significantly cheaper airfare was worth the drive and the gas money to get down there. I was very blessed by my better half's cousin, Bo...he has an aunt in Long Beach (about 15 miles from the OC Airport), and he called her and asked if I could stay the night with her Thursday night because my flight was at 6:45am Friday morning. She was such a sweet little old lady, and kindly agreed and let me stay :) So Thursday evening, I left work, swung by my house and picked up my bags, kissed my 4-legged children (I always hate having to leave them behind :( ...) and made the 2 hour and 45 minutes drive down to Long Beach. Shorter than I expected :) I went to bed pretty soon after dinner because I had set my alarm for 3:45am the next morning so I could leave by 4:15am. I had heard horror stories about freeway traffic in that part of California, so being that it was my first time to a new airport, I wanted to play it safe. Ended up being a little too safe, because it only took me 20 minutes to get to the parking lot at the airport, and then just a few more to unload the car and have a nice shuttle driver take me to the terminal. So I was there super early, but it's better to be safe than sorry, right?
A very nice skycap got my bags for me immediately when I exited the shuttle, got me checked in and gave me my boarding pass. I felt horrible, because I had just given my last dollar bill to the shuttle driver as a tip, so I had nothing to give him, and he was super friendly and helpful. So I asked him where I could find an ATM, went downstairs by the baggage claim, withdrew some money, got change, and went back and gave him 3 bucks. He was so surprised and told me thank you and actually gave me a hug! To me, it was not a big deal at all...to him, it made his morning, and possibly his day. It kinda made me wonder how poorly he gets treated by most of the people he helps... :(
After that, I made my way through security and had a long wait before my plane started boarding. So I took the opportunity to read a little bit of my most recent iPad purchase, Confessions of a Military Wife. I had purchased the Kindle edition from Amazon.com for a mere $8.69, and let me tell you, so far, it has been worth every penny.
If you are a relatively new military wife, or are dating or engaged to a soldier, sailor or airman, I highly recommend this read. Although I must add this disclaimer: If you read it in a public place like an airport terminal or airplane, be prepared for lots of weird looks when you are trying to stifle the uncontrollable laughter coming from within you. It's pretty darn funny :)
I finally boarded my 6:45am Southwest flight to Phoenix where I had about an hour and a half layover. I read more of my book. And eventually I made it to Tulsa. My birthday sister and brother-in-law picked me up and we headed to Claremore to pick up the kiddos. I have the most adorable niece and nephew...and can hardly believe how fast they are growing up! It makes me sad that I have to miss so much of their lives. I hate the idea of them thinking of Aunt Lauren as someone who wasn't around often when they were growing up :( But it was great to see them! After picking them up from school, we dropped the boys off at the house, and the girls went to visit my other sister at work so they could try on their bridesmaids dresses. Brooklynn insisted on going because she "LOVES dresses!" It was cute :) Unfortunately, my $30 bridesmaids dresses are not going to work out after all...my oldest sister is 5'8", and it was a bit too short for her (and my) taste. So...back to the drawing board on that... :P
After that, we went back to Sarah's house and I got ready for Jesse's Bachelorette Party. Lucky for me, her dinner party was at On the Border in Tulsa, which is literally right across the street from the mall. I had bought the dresses on July 19th from the Charlotte Russe website, so I BARELY made my 30 day window that I could return the dresses for a full refund. I made a quick detour to the mall, returned the dresses for everything except the shipping, bought Jesse one more gift on my way out the door, and headed to the dinner party! We ate dinner, played a few games and Jesse opened her shower gifts :)
After dinner, we made our way to the Hard Rock Casino to go to Friction to dance the night away. We got there a bit early, and Friction was kinda dead, so we found a table near the bar to hang out until the dance floor picked up. I tried to tell Jesse that now that WE had arrived, we WERE the party...but we sat for a bit anyways...
My lovely sisters were so good to me and came to Friction too. Since it was Sarah's birthday, and I was already by default going to Friction, her and Robbie and Cassie and Brett all decided to join me for a double celebration. Other than the bride, I had never met any of the other girls at the party, so I was excited that they came :)
I had seen an old friend of mine from across the room that I actually used to live with in high school. I hadn't spoken to her in years, and we haven't exactly remained friends...but her birthday was Saturday, and since it was officially Saturday morning by this point, I decided I should go say hi and wish her a happy birthday. I was a little nervous, because to put it mildly, I'm not her favorite person...but I was glad I did. It went well, she was very surprised, thanked me and congratulated me on my engagement. I had seen her a little over a year ago, and it wasn't nearly as pleasant. It makes me happy to know that we can move on and put our past grudges behind us. It was actually nice to see her and talk with her for a few minutes :)
After that, I headed to the parking lot to get in the truck my sister let me borrow for the weekend. As I was walking out around 1:30am, I passed a couple that was on their way in and clearly in a good mood from the alcohol...and the man says, "You're leaving too early! You even have your dancing shoes!" So I, carrying my heels in my hand because they had done a number on my feet, holler back at him in my best southern accent, "My feet are tired!" I had been in Oklahoma for a whopping 11 hours, and my country girl vibe was already sneaking out in true fashion...
I went back to my sister's house, we stayed up way too late visiting and finally went to bed around 3:30am. This made 7:45am came really early...We got up and around, loaded the car with ice chests and camping gear, and headed to go float the river with my whole family for my sister's birthday celebration! I, unfortunately, did not get to stay and camp after floating, but my sister, brother-in-law and the kiddos did. After I almost got into a huge fight with the guy behind the counter who insisted I was wrong about his fine print, we finally got to use our Groupons. I don't know what is with customer service these days...or the lack thereof...but whatever happend to the customer is always right? The fine print for the $11 Groupon clearly stated, "Limit one per three people." As anybody with a brain would assume, I took this to mean I can use the Groupon, and up to two other people have to pay full price. So by default, if we had a group of 4 people, we should get to use 2 Groupons: one for the first set of three, and one for the 4th person. But rude man behind the counter told me multiple times that I was "terribly wrong" and that I HAD to have 3 people to be able to use every Groupon. In other words, I had to have 6 people in order to use 2 Groupons. I call this false advertising. It said "limit 1 per 3 people,"...NOT..."MUST have 3 people in order to use 1 coupon." After arguing with him for a bit, getting really frustrated that he had the nerve to tell me I couldn't read, I finally decided he wasn't worth my time and walked away. Thankfully, there was a nice girl behind the counter that ended up allowing us to use all of our Groupons after all (we had 14 people, 3 of which were children that only had to pay $7.50/child to float anyways, and 6 Groupons). If it weren't for her, I may have never gone back to Arrowhead to float...ever again.
Anyways, after that ordeal and a long wait for my sister and her family to get checked into their campsite and get the ice chests packed for the float trip, we finally made it to the river :) Minus a few immature incidents, it was a good time overall. I had a good time with my family and was happy that I got to spend some time with them :)
We finally got off the river around 5:45pm. I had to rush back to Claremore (an hour drive from the river), shower, get dressed and drive to Pryor (a 20 min. drive from Claremore) for Bachelorette Party, Part Deux by 7:00pm. This clearly did not happen. But, I did manage to take a shower and get completely dressed in less than 15 minutes, and I made it to Pryor only 20 minutes late. Thankfully, the party hadn't started just yet :) This was my first experience with a For Ladies Only Party, and it was interesting, for sure. haha. I accidently left my camera in the car, so I did not get any good pictures. All in all, it was a fun experience and Jesse seemed to enjoy it!
After eating nothing but a donut, a small sandwich, some doritos, a piece of cake and a few chewy chocolate chip cookies throughout the entire day, I had nearly sent my body into shock and was craving something with substance, so I stopped by Arby's for some late night chicken strips on my way home. I ended up only eating one and a half of them because I was too tired to function...haha. I made it back to Claremore around 10:30 and stayed the night with my mom so she could take me to the airport for my 6:00am flight the next morning. Bless her :)
All in all, I had a great weekend with my family and my dear friend. I was sad to leave. BUT it makes me happy knowing that I get to go back in less than two weeks for another visit, only this one will be for five days and four nights because it's a holiday weekend! ...Stay tuned for Part 2 - the wedding and the annual family camping/lake trip! :)
I am calling this Part 1, because I get to go home for another visit in just a couple of weeks over Labor Day weekend...looking forward to that one too :) One of my best friends, Jesse, is getting married that weekend, and I bought a plane ticket to go home for that...and she scheduled her Bachelorette Party for two weeks before the wedding, which worked out great, because I had a 3-day-weekend this past weekend and was off Friday! Jesse was nice enough to offer to pay for my plane ticket for her wedding, but I really wanted to buy it myself - so she agreed, and offered to buy my plane ticket to come home for her Bachelorette Party instead. I felt really bad to ask her to pay for that, but there was no way I could afford two plane tickets so close together when I have been watching our pennies very tightly in order to get the truck paid off...so we compromised :) She and her husband-to-be were very generous and paid for my one-way flight home for the weekend, and I had built up enough airline miles for a one-way flight home...so I only had to pay $5 in taxes. It saved us both some money, and made it where I could come celebrate with her, so I think it was a good compromise :) It worked out really nicely, because Friday also happened to be my sister's birthday, so I got to celebrate with her too!
I found a good deal on a flight from Orange County, CA to Tulsa. In case you weren't aware, airfare is outrageous right now...and flying out of the airports near Ridgecrest are even more outrageous. Google told me that the John Wayne Airport was 135 miles and a 3 hour and 1 minute drive from my house. I figured the significantly cheaper airfare was worth the drive and the gas money to get down there. I was very blessed by my better half's cousin, Bo...he has an aunt in Long Beach (about 15 miles from the OC Airport), and he called her and asked if I could stay the night with her Thursday night because my flight was at 6:45am Friday morning. She was such a sweet little old lady, and kindly agreed and let me stay :) So Thursday evening, I left work, swung by my house and picked up my bags, kissed my 4-legged children (I always hate having to leave them behind :( ...) and made the 2 hour and 45 minutes drive down to Long Beach. Shorter than I expected :) I went to bed pretty soon after dinner because I had set my alarm for 3:45am the next morning so I could leave by 4:15am. I had heard horror stories about freeway traffic in that part of California, so being that it was my first time to a new airport, I wanted to play it safe. Ended up being a little too safe, because it only took me 20 minutes to get to the parking lot at the airport, and then just a few more to unload the car and have a nice shuttle driver take me to the terminal. So I was there super early, but it's better to be safe than sorry, right?
A very nice skycap got my bags for me immediately when I exited the shuttle, got me checked in and gave me my boarding pass. I felt horrible, because I had just given my last dollar bill to the shuttle driver as a tip, so I had nothing to give him, and he was super friendly and helpful. So I asked him where I could find an ATM, went downstairs by the baggage claim, withdrew some money, got change, and went back and gave him 3 bucks. He was so surprised and told me thank you and actually gave me a hug! To me, it was not a big deal at all...to him, it made his morning, and possibly his day. It kinda made me wonder how poorly he gets treated by most of the people he helps... :(
After that, I made my way through security and had a long wait before my plane started boarding. So I took the opportunity to read a little bit of my most recent iPad purchase, Confessions of a Military Wife. I had purchased the Kindle edition from Amazon.com for a mere $8.69, and let me tell you, so far, it has been worth every penny.
If you are a relatively new military wife, or are dating or engaged to a soldier, sailor or airman, I highly recommend this read. Although I must add this disclaimer: If you read it in a public place like an airport terminal or airplane, be prepared for lots of weird looks when you are trying to stifle the uncontrollable laughter coming from within you. It's pretty darn funny :)
I finally boarded my 6:45am Southwest flight to Phoenix where I had about an hour and a half layover. I read more of my book. And eventually I made it to Tulsa. My birthday sister and brother-in-law picked me up and we headed to Claremore to pick up the kiddos. I have the most adorable niece and nephew...and can hardly believe how fast they are growing up! It makes me sad that I have to miss so much of their lives. I hate the idea of them thinking of Aunt Lauren as someone who wasn't around often when they were growing up :( But it was great to see them! After picking them up from school, we dropped the boys off at the house, and the girls went to visit my other sister at work so they could try on their bridesmaids dresses. Brooklynn insisted on going because she "LOVES dresses!" It was cute :) Unfortunately, my $30 bridesmaids dresses are not going to work out after all...my oldest sister is 5'8", and it was a bit too short for her (and my) taste. So...back to the drawing board on that... :P
After that, we went back to Sarah's house and I got ready for Jesse's Bachelorette Party. Lucky for me, her dinner party was at On the Border in Tulsa, which is literally right across the street from the mall. I had bought the dresses on July 19th from the Charlotte Russe website, so I BARELY made my 30 day window that I could return the dresses for a full refund. I made a quick detour to the mall, returned the dresses for everything except the shipping, bought Jesse one more gift on my way out the door, and headed to the dinner party! We ate dinner, played a few games and Jesse opened her shower gifts :)
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| The Bachelorette :) |
After dinner, we made our way to the Hard Rock Casino to go to Friction to dance the night away. We got there a bit early, and Friction was kinda dead, so we found a table near the bar to hang out until the dance floor picked up. I tried to tell Jesse that now that WE had arrived, we WERE the party...but we sat for a bit anyways...
 |
| Me and the Bachelorette, once the party finally got started :) |
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| All we are missing is my better half ;) |
After that, I headed to the parking lot to get in the truck my sister let me borrow for the weekend. As I was walking out around 1:30am, I passed a couple that was on their way in and clearly in a good mood from the alcohol...and the man says, "You're leaving too early! You even have your dancing shoes!" So I, carrying my heels in my hand because they had done a number on my feet, holler back at him in my best southern accent, "My feet are tired!" I had been in Oklahoma for a whopping 11 hours, and my country girl vibe was already sneaking out in true fashion...
I went back to my sister's house, we stayed up way too late visiting and finally went to bed around 3:30am. This made 7:45am came really early...We got up and around, loaded the car with ice chests and camping gear, and headed to go float the river with my whole family for my sister's birthday celebration! I, unfortunately, did not get to stay and camp after floating, but my sister, brother-in-law and the kiddos did. After I almost got into a huge fight with the guy behind the counter who insisted I was wrong about his fine print, we finally got to use our Groupons. I don't know what is with customer service these days...or the lack thereof...but whatever happend to the customer is always right? The fine print for the $11 Groupon clearly stated, "Limit one per three people." As anybody with a brain would assume, I took this to mean I can use the Groupon, and up to two other people have to pay full price. So by default, if we had a group of 4 people, we should get to use 2 Groupons: one for the first set of three, and one for the 4th person. But rude man behind the counter told me multiple times that I was "terribly wrong" and that I HAD to have 3 people to be able to use every Groupon. In other words, I had to have 6 people in order to use 2 Groupons. I call this false advertising. It said "limit 1 per 3 people,"...NOT..."MUST have 3 people in order to use 1 coupon." After arguing with him for a bit, getting really frustrated that he had the nerve to tell me I couldn't read, I finally decided he wasn't worth my time and walked away. Thankfully, there was a nice girl behind the counter that ended up allowing us to use all of our Groupons after all (we had 14 people, 3 of which were children that only had to pay $7.50/child to float anyways, and 6 Groupons). If it weren't for her, I may have never gone back to Arrowhead to float...ever again.
Anyways, after that ordeal and a long wait for my sister and her family to get checked into their campsite and get the ice chests packed for the float trip, we finally made it to the river :) Minus a few immature incidents, it was a good time overall. I had a good time with my family and was happy that I got to spend some time with them :)
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| My niece, Brooklyn...a.k.a. my little diva ;) |
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| We docked the boats and let the kids get plenty of play time in :) |
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| Me with the birthday girl :) |
After eating nothing but a donut, a small sandwich, some doritos, a piece of cake and a few chewy chocolate chip cookies throughout the entire day, I had nearly sent my body into shock and was craving something with substance, so I stopped by Arby's for some late night chicken strips on my way home. I ended up only eating one and a half of them because I was too tired to function...haha. I made it back to Claremore around 10:30 and stayed the night with my mom so she could take me to the airport for my 6:00am flight the next morning. Bless her :)
All in all, I had a great weekend with my family and my dear friend. I was sad to leave. BUT it makes me happy knowing that I get to go back in less than two weeks for another visit, only this one will be for five days and four nights because it's a holiday weekend! ...Stay tuned for Part 2 - the wedding and the annual family camping/lake trip! :)
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