Fly the unfriendly skies

San Diego is not known for its bad weather ... in fact, it's known for its great weather.  So, imagine Danny's surprise when, after I dropped him at the Southwest SkyCap at 11:00 a.m., he found out that his flight to San Diego had been canceled.  Apparently there were high winds and a lot of rain.

The SkyCap attendant kindly escorted Danny to the front of the line at the ticket counter.  The ticket agent assured Danny that he would be able to get to San Diego via Oakland.  So, he went to Oakland--only 10 minutes behind his original schedule.

However, once he got to Oakland, he found out that his connecting flight to San Diego had also been canceled.  He tried to get on a later one, and it also got canceled.  His options then were limited to flying into the Ontario Airport and his family would pick him up there, or he could fly into LAX and either take a train or rent a car.  The Ontario flights were booked, so he was forced to go to LAX.

But the story doesn't end there.  Oh, no.  We are just beginning!

The flight to LAX was supposed to leave at 6 pm, but there was no flight crew, so they couldn't board until around 7:20 pm ... which meant that Danny would miss his 8:30 train to Oceanside.  But that would be okay, or so we thought, because there was a 10:19 train to Oceanside as well.  The flight lasted around 1 hour 40 minutes; the plane landed around 9:00 pm, but the plane spent 20 minutes getting to the gate.  And then he had to wait for his luggage.  And one of his suitcases didn't make it ... until 20-30 minutes later.  Plus, he had to take a 30-minute cab ride to the train station from the airport.  So, he called me to make a car rental reservation for him, because there was no way he would make it to the train on time. 

I found a car through Enterprise, but they were going to charge $80 just for the one-way drop-off.  Fortunately, I found another car through Alamo, and they didn't charge anything for the one-way rental. 

Anyway, Danny didn't know where to go to find the Rental Car counters.  He asked an airport employee who directed him to the shuttles.  He took the shuttle, but it dropped him off at the wrong place!  So, he walked for about a mile, past some shady-looking apartment complexes at 11:00 at night carrying two suitcases in the rain.  Although he felt like throwing himself on the ground and crying, he didn't; he kept on walking, until he finally arrived at the car rental counter.  He got a VW bug.  Fortunately, he was able to take the dark blue one over the light green one, so it wasn't too effeminate.

Danny drove through the dark and the rain for two hours and eventually made it to his parents' home. At 1:15 am. Everyone was asleep.  He let his mom know that he was there, whereupon she told him to go get in the bed in the master bedroom with his little brother Brent. 

Brent is 30 years old and is around 6 feet tall.  He was also sleeping sprawled out diagonally across the King-size bed, somehow taking up every inch of the mattress. 

Danny didn't feel like trying to move him around so he could get some room on the bed, so he slept on the couch.  After spending 14.5 hours in transit (he could have driven to San Diego in that time!), he had a hard time falling asleep, but eventually did.  He woke up when he heard his dad getting ready for work. 

As he was unpacking things from his suitcase, he found that his suitcases had gotten wet from being out in the rain.  And the suitcase that he had packed some of his games in had gotten quite wet.  His "Puerto Rico" game got wet and a little mis-shapen.  (For those of you who know how Danny loves his board games, you'll realize how upsetting this is for him.) Fortunately, none of the game pieces were affected.

One thing positive happened out of all of this, though:  I was listening to the radio on the way home from work, and they were doing one of those "Be the tenth caller and win a pair of tickets" contests.  So, I called in.  I got through on the first try, and I was the TENTH caller!  I won!!

Which reminds me ... I am a very lucky person.  I have won two other sets of tickets through radio contests like that.  And I won an X-box in college for filling out an online survey.  (When I got the call saying I had won an X-Box, I asked, "What's an X-Box?"  I ended up using it as a DVD player.)  One other proof that I'm lucky:  Danny.  What a great guy!!  He's so sweet, hard-working, thoughtful, sensitive, and gosh-darn cute ... I'm lucky he's mine.