For our upcoming 20th anniversary, Chad and I decided we want to experience 20 adventures together. Some of them will be small – for example,
eating a local restaurant that we have never tried – and some will be more
monumental. Big or small, we’re looking
forward to them all.
That brings me to our 2nd official adventure,
which turned out to be about 10 adventures gloriously wrapped into one. And shockingly did not result in either of us
being harmed in the process as tempers flared and nerves were tested. I don’t recall signing any releases, but
there’s a very good chance our entire day was filmed for a revival of Candid
Camera. If not, it should have been.
It all started when we recently decided to spend a long
weekend in LA. Being winos, we learned
about a dinner being held at a restaurant called
Republique. It was a wine pairings
dinner with Lafitte Rothschild wines from around the world hosted by one of the
Lafitte Rothschild representatives and the pairings were blessed by the
winemaker himself. In essence, it was
too good to pass up.
We quickly swung into action booking flights and hotel and
decidedly declared this would be our 2nd adventure of the
anniversary year. Finally, departure day
arrived. We packed our bags and headed
out to run a few errands on our way to the airport.
One of our stops was going to be to see my hairdresser for a
quick bang trim. Unfortunately, his car
was broken into during the night and he was understandably sidelined filing
reports and getting a loaner vehicle while his is repaired. No big deal.
I hate it for him, but not having my bangs trimmed was definitely not an
ender for me.
Our next two stops were car-related and uneventful; except
one of the stops proved that you never know who you’re going to meet. We dropped into the tolltag store for a quick
transaction and learned that our representative came over from Cuba at age 7
(she’s now 63) and her father was the chief engineer for Jacques Cousteau. How cool is that?
Having completed our errands sooner than expected, we got to
the airport early anticipating extra time to get some lunch and maybe send some
emails before our flight departed.
WRONG! Trouble was brewing the
second we stepped through the sliding glass doors into Terminal D (remember
this, because it will be important later).
There were people everywhere, but everything was at a standstill. American Airlines’ computer system went down
nationwide and clearly there are no emergency backup plans for dealing with an
unexpected computer glitch. Instead of
being able to manually check people in and keep things moving, they grounded
flights and passed out little bottles of water to try to keep the restless travelers
at bay.
The interesting part was that the travelers began to find
work arounds that AA had not even considered.
For some reason, if you have the AA app on your phone, it was
working. The catch was that you could
get your boarding pass, but you couldn’t check a bag. If you’ve ever travelled with me, you would
know that I do not pack lightly. Understatement of the year. You
never know when you’ll need that kitchen sink, right? This is the bane of Chad’s existence when
travelling with me and a frequent topic of conversation…especially
yesterday. If our bag(s) had been
smaller, we could have passed through security with them using the boarding
passes on our phones. Unfortunately, our
GIGANTIC suitcase would not make the cut and we had to wait until the systems
came back online.
Voila! The systems
were up, Chad was hangry, and I was not in the best mood myself. Chad rushed the line to get our steamer trunk
checked and then it happened. The AA rep
asked for Chad’s identification AND HE DIDN’T HAVE IT. When he was travelling earlier in the week, he
inadvertently left it in a carry-on bag instead of putting it back in his
wallet. Panic set in.
In what I believe was an effort to avoid being caught up in
a domestic dispute, the rep suggested that, since it was a domestic flight, the
TSA might let him through security by showing other things with his name on it
(e.g. credit cards). Frankly, I don’t
think he cared if it would really work and just wanted to get rid of us.
Well, it turns out the AA rep was right. For the low, low cost of your dignity, you
can in fact get through security without a valid ID.
Chad was put through the paces and I believe that his security screening
also qualified as his annual physical.
Thoroughly humiliated and stressed out, he found me waiting impatiently
for him.
Then the race was on. We ran
around to gate D37 to board our flight.
Alas, D37 was boarding a flight to San Francisco. My first thought was that all of the delays
had shifted things around and our flight would board there after the SFO flight
took off. Wrong! Taking a closer look at my boarding pass, it
said gate C37. Yes, we were in the wrong
terminal.
And the race was on again.
We ran to Skylink and caught it as the doors were sliding shut. Convinced we were going to miss our flight,
we waited impatiently as Skylink followed its route to the E terminal and
eventually to C. Chad was looking pretty
sheepish the entire way and reluctant to make eye contact with me, because he was the one who told me the flight was in
terminal D and I never questioned it or double-checked. My trust was in him. “Arriving at C Terminal.” Aah, those sweet words…and then the race was
on yet again. We ran through the terminal to our
gate and made it in time to board. What
a relief! We’re finally on our way.
As we took a moment to catch our breaths, Chad said, “Now
you know why you’re always in charge of logistics when we travel. I travel for business and do absolutely fine
by myself, but today you would think I’ve never travelled before.” Remember these key words. He also took a moment to call my parents to
ask them to Fedex his driver license to him in LA so that he would not have
such an intimate TSA encounter on the way home.
The flight was smooth and we arrived in LA almost on time,
which was a miracle in and of itself. We
would have time to get to the hotel, take a short rest, and freshen up before
dinner. Or not. After watching many suitcases roll by on the
baggage claim carousel, it became painfully apparent that our suitcase did not
make the flight. Chad checked with a
representative who confirmed that our bag was either on a flight to Minneapolis
or would arrive LA on the next flight. It
was a mystery.
Not knowing where our bag was in these glorious United
States, we decided to make efficient use of our time to fetch the rental car
while we waited. We got the car without
incident, though there was another couple on the same rental car aisle who we
thought might kill each other before selecting a mid-size sedan. The woman was screaming at her husband in a
foreign tongue I did not understand, but their body language did not need
translation. Perhaps they had experienced a similar travel day to ours. Seeing their tempers flare
higher and higher, we got out of there as fast as we could. The very last thing we needed yesterday was
to become witnesses to murder.
Good news! Our suitcase
was on the next flight.
Bad news! Traffic was an epic nightmare and we got to the
hotel 15 minutes before our dinner was scheduled to begin. As I traversed my way across LA to the hotel,
Chad kept reassuring me that the restaurant was merely .5 miles from the
hotel. He knew that because he confirmed
it when he booked the room.
We raced into the hotel, threw our bags down in our room,
hastily changed our clothes and summoned an Uber. Our Uber driver, who actually turned out to
be a very funny, nice guy, had trouble finding our hotel and ended up on a
one-way side street. In lieu of waiting
for him to wind his way through traffic around to the front of the hotel, we
ran. Once again, for what felt like the 10th time in less than 6 hours, I found myself running
behind Chad to get transportation, but this time I was in heels. Oy vey!
We threw ourselves into the back of the car and were on our
way…at the snail’s pace of 2 mph in the snarled traffic, which Justin, our driver,
declared was “above average.” Justin
sensed our tension and tried to ply us with riddles and candy. Yes, he offered to share his Dr. Pepper
flavored jellybeans with us on the 6-mile ride to dinner which was estimated to
take 35 minutes. Six miles?! I thought Chad was going to melt into his
seat. I don’t know what restaurant is a ½
mile away from our hotel, but it’s certainly not the one where we were going.
After such an incredible journey, we arrived at our
destination late but before the first course was served. The dinner was phenomenal, the wine was
phenomenal, and, most importantly, we were there to experience it.
Coming out of the restaurant feeling pretty good about how
things turned out, we hopped in another Uber and began making our way back to
the hotel in what was significantly less traffic. As we sat at a stoplight chatting with our
driver, we saw a war between two BMW drivers raging across the intersection. People were out of their cars and one of the men
was banging on the hood of the other guy’s car.
As the BMW moved to get out of the way, the guy ripped off the side
mirror and leapt into his car to chase him.
Huh, that was strange. While we were curious to see how that story ended, our frayed nerves and thoroughly exhausted selves couldn't wait another minute to get to the hotel.
We were thoroughly spent. Whew, what a day!
With adventure #2 in the books, we look forward to see what today
will bring. And we’re ready for it…I
think. But we’ve both agreed that I’ll
be in charge of the logistics. Stay
tuned.
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