My fellow Americans, I have not been entirely truthful with you. I did gagoogidy that girl. I gashmoygadied her gaflavity with my googus. And I am sorry.
--Glen Quagmire, 2008
The return flight sucked as expected. The complete level of suck is only reduced by the benefit it offered me, but overall, the trip sucked.
The first flight was unpleasant because I had to wake up at 0400. As Samantha and I polished off the Grey Goose and Kahlua I got for my birthday (thanks Mom), the night before sleep was in short order. Sam and I checked in and I boarded around 0600. There was little incident. Fuss was tired and got some sleep.
The second flight turned out to be the flight from hell. I had about an hour or so layover in Dallas, which is great because walking Fuss around the airport is hardly a good time. I noticed the gate listed for my second flight was listed with a weird acronym (PFW or something). Upon asking I was told no plane was available for the flight, so the gate was pending awaiting an airplane. I still do not know what the fuck that was about, so I moved to the set of gates I was told would be one of the gates I would board at. Shortly thereafter, the flight was canceled. I was to have a 4-hour layover in Shreveport, so I was not especially concerned with this cancellation since I was automatically rescheduled on a flight about 70 minutes later.
Okay, so instead of laying over in Shreveport, I am in Dallas. I would prefer Shreveport only because I would have turned over Anabelle. She was tired, she was getting hungry, and she was unhappy with the travelling and waiting (cannot blame her), so I wanted to get her home and finish the transition. We boarded this plane expecting to leave around 1100. The pilot then told us we had a mechanical error and had to deplane. We moved to a new gate shortly thereafter and expected to board the new plane at 1200. I still was not all that concerned. My flight out of Shreveport was around 1430 and the flight time was less than an hour from Dallas.
I did get to meet up with Sam again briefly when she arrived in Dallas and she held Fuss for awhile as we awaited boarding. I was in my seat and all of us were ready to go around 1230. I am not even exaggerating when I tell you we did not actually take off until around 1400 because we spent the next hour or so counting passengers and then requesting permission to take off. The latter is not surprising; sometimes takeoff takes a few minutes from permission, to taxi, to waiting in line. However, waiting a fucking hour while they clear up their paperwork is ridiculous.
Understand, this is a small plane with only 50 seats. There was a little confusion because a couple people on the previous flight eventually got sick of all the bullshit and just drove to Shreveport (about a 3- to 4-hour drive), but that confusion should have been minimal. We retained our seat numbers and all of us were checked in as we boarded the plane. There was a dispute as to whether there was 47 or 48 people on board. Our flight attendant insisted there was 47, while the American Eagle staff handling the paperwork thought it was 48.
Okay, our attendant noted that there were 3 empty seats. The staff even did a walkthrough asking us our names as they walked through the plane, and still came up with 48 because they forgot to mark off someone's name who did not board the plane. Um, there were 3 open seats and the plane seats 50, how fucking hard is that? Even doing an individual check of each seat and person occupying the seat and they still fucked it up. Well, needless to say I was pretty pissed that I missed my connection in Shreveport because of this.
The turnover with the Drache Dame was unpleasant. They were not even at the airport and Fuss and I had to wait about half an hour (so theoretically, even if my flight did arrive on time, I still would have missed my connection). She came in carrying a bunch of toys, no doubt, to try and mollify Anabelle's wrath upon my departure. During the short walk from baggage to the CR-V, Fuss told the DL that she could not drive and that I needed to. Anabelle also said she wanted to go to "Daddy's House." I said nothing and started buckling Anabelle up, told her to be a good girl, do not pee or poop in her diaper (she was potty trained at that point and I wanted her to keep it up since the DL would offer no support in this). The DL got all pissed, yelled at me that she had it, I looked at her cross and she freaked out and told me to "get out of my truck."
The worst part was about 2 minutes later, Trudy called and asked if I had Anabelle's play (her Nintendo DS). I did have it and instead of just coming right back to get it, the DL said I should just mail it. Now, this DS is of great importance to Anabelle and she has gotten remarkably good at some of the harder games (Yoshi's Island DS is a beast of a game at some of the harder levels, and Fuss does quite well). Anabelle absolutely loves the DS. Anyway, I thought that was just mean, but I expected nothing more of Drache Dame.
The good news out of all this is that I was required to layover at least one day. I negotiated with American to extend it another day, was charged nothing more and I was able to hang out with the Sam for another day and a half since she was in Dallas until this morning.
The flight out of Shreveport was, to no surprise, delayed about an hour and a half for no explainable reason, so that was just the cherry on top of an already shitty day.
The flight I had yesterday was without incident from Dallas through LA to Honolulu.
The first flight was unpleasant because I had to wake up at 0400. As Samantha and I polished off the Grey Goose and Kahlua I got for my birthday (thanks Mom), the night before sleep was in short order. Sam and I checked in and I boarded around 0600. There was little incident. Fuss was tired and got some sleep.
The second flight turned out to be the flight from hell. I had about an hour or so layover in Dallas, which is great because walking Fuss around the airport is hardly a good time. I noticed the gate listed for my second flight was listed with a weird acronym (PFW or something). Upon asking I was told no plane was available for the flight, so the gate was pending awaiting an airplane. I still do not know what the fuck that was about, so I moved to the set of gates I was told would be one of the gates I would board at. Shortly thereafter, the flight was canceled. I was to have a 4-hour layover in Shreveport, so I was not especially concerned with this cancellation since I was automatically rescheduled on a flight about 70 minutes later.
Okay, so instead of laying over in Shreveport, I am in Dallas. I would prefer Shreveport only because I would have turned over Anabelle. She was tired, she was getting hungry, and she was unhappy with the travelling and waiting (cannot blame her), so I wanted to get her home and finish the transition. We boarded this plane expecting to leave around 1100. The pilot then told us we had a mechanical error and had to deplane. We moved to a new gate shortly thereafter and expected to board the new plane at 1200. I still was not all that concerned. My flight out of Shreveport was around 1430 and the flight time was less than an hour from Dallas.
I did get to meet up with Sam again briefly when she arrived in Dallas and she held Fuss for awhile as we awaited boarding. I was in my seat and all of us were ready to go around 1230. I am not even exaggerating when I tell you we did not actually take off until around 1400 because we spent the next hour or so counting passengers and then requesting permission to take off. The latter is not surprising; sometimes takeoff takes a few minutes from permission, to taxi, to waiting in line. However, waiting a fucking hour while they clear up their paperwork is ridiculous.
Understand, this is a small plane with only 50 seats. There was a little confusion because a couple people on the previous flight eventually got sick of all the bullshit and just drove to Shreveport (about a 3- to 4-hour drive), but that confusion should have been minimal. We retained our seat numbers and all of us were checked in as we boarded the plane. There was a dispute as to whether there was 47 or 48 people on board. Our flight attendant insisted there was 47, while the American Eagle staff handling the paperwork thought it was 48.
Okay, our attendant noted that there were 3 empty seats. The staff even did a walkthrough asking us our names as they walked through the plane, and still came up with 48 because they forgot to mark off someone's name who did not board the plane. Um, there were 3 open seats and the plane seats 50, how fucking hard is that? Even doing an individual check of each seat and person occupying the seat and they still fucked it up. Well, needless to say I was pretty pissed that I missed my connection in Shreveport because of this.
The turnover with the Drache Dame was unpleasant. They were not even at the airport and Fuss and I had to wait about half an hour (so theoretically, even if my flight did arrive on time, I still would have missed my connection). She came in carrying a bunch of toys, no doubt, to try and mollify Anabelle's wrath upon my departure. During the short walk from baggage to the CR-V, Fuss told the DL that she could not drive and that I needed to. Anabelle also said she wanted to go to "Daddy's House." I said nothing and started buckling Anabelle up, told her to be a good girl, do not pee or poop in her diaper (she was potty trained at that point and I wanted her to keep it up since the DL would offer no support in this). The DL got all pissed, yelled at me that she had it, I looked at her cross and she freaked out and told me to "get out of my truck."
The worst part was about 2 minutes later, Trudy called and asked if I had Anabelle's play (her Nintendo DS). I did have it and instead of just coming right back to get it, the DL said I should just mail it. Now, this DS is of great importance to Anabelle and she has gotten remarkably good at some of the harder games (Yoshi's Island DS is a beast of a game at some of the harder levels, and Fuss does quite well). Anabelle absolutely loves the DS. Anyway, I thought that was just mean, but I expected nothing more of Drache Dame.
The good news out of all this is that I was required to layover at least one day. I negotiated with American to extend it another day, was charged nothing more and I was able to hang out with the Sam for another day and a half since she was in Dallas until this morning.
The flight out of Shreveport was, to no surprise, delayed about an hour and a half for no explainable reason, so that was just the cherry on top of an already shitty day.
The flight I had yesterday was without incident from Dallas through LA to Honolulu.
