Airlines!! - kim's version

Let me begin with an apology... We won't generally go this long without posting... i shall now tell the tale of our adventure. We first didn't have a computer power cord (explained with the lost luggage), then Jared's mom's house didn't have internet, then... we don't have internet here in Ames yet.
SO There will be many parts to this because there is much to catch up on but... for Now I shall share the outline of our Travels. Then we'll update you on our move-in progress and other things...

so so.
here we go go..

If you recall, we got the keys to our humble home December 18th 4pm-ish. Then the moving began. We left December 20th at 8am for Good 'ol Illinois where we dropped off Luda. (don't let the sad eyes fool you - they SPOILED him.)

2pm we took off, in an ice storm, to the Moline airport where our flight was to depart at 6pm. Due to the ice storm, it was delayed until 8:30. The issue...Our flight from Detroit was to take off at 8:30.
When arriving to the Detroit airport, it was 11:50pm or so (time change) and apparently the employees all were off work at midnight. So they took seven of us and gave us hotel vouchers, one room each unless we were 'together' (...me and jared, and one older couple). When we shuffled ourselves down to the shuttle area and called the Embassy where we were to stay... there was only One room left there. hmmm. Jared had taken off through the airport to find someone for help - while the rest of the group decided to call other hotels. They decided on a Best Western...and gave the poor pregnant college kids the free room.

Our shuttle bus driver guy was Great. He didn't get there until 2:30am or so... And we asked him for food recommendations that late (we hadn't eaten since noon...). He gave us a few numbers and told us he had just ordered a pizza and if we couldn't find food we could have some of his... which seemed awkward at the time.... but come 2:45 when the pizza place we called said "sorry, we ran out of food" ...that shuttle driver's pizza wasn't half bad. Thanks Mr. Guy. .....Sorry Mom, i know I told you I wouldn't take food from strangers, but.....and then, on top of that, we managed to order pizza from some Other place that did have food because we were sooooo hungry.

ANYWAY. we ended up with a sweet room. Two flat screen tv's, a Huge bed...so we layed down on the couch and fell asleep watching tv until the pizza guy knocked at our door with our gigantic pizza feast (salad, cheese stix, And pizza - what can I say, we were hungry) at 3:30 AM or some such obnoxious time...So we stuffed our faces for 15 minutes (consuming a miniscule amount of salad and stix, but half a pizza....at least there were green peppers on it - that's almost healthy) and crashed, but ohhhhhh in the morning, we had the breakfast of champions!!! Omeletes. Oatmeal, Tons of fresh fruit, ...there was anything Breakfast you could come up with, we even swiped some muffins.

Off we were to our next flight - we redirected ourselves to Harrisburg Airport instead of Baltimore. We arrived and our entire flight...well we didn't have our luggage. Hmmmm. So with one person working the computer, they had us give them our phone number and address and swore that our luggage was at "state college" and would be there in the morning, then delivered.

The next day we called Northwest...

their ...their customer service line is ...hit and/or miss. You either get the kindest soul (1 in 20 tries) or you get some lazy oaf who hates his/her life and feels that your life too must then be made miserable.
For the next 3 days, we called... 3 times a day, at least. But we needed some "baggage claim" number which...we never got, because they didn't file "claims" they just had us write our stuff down. So some customer service people wouldn't help us at All! rarrrh. We were told our luggage was in detroit. Then that it was in Moline. Then that it was in detroit. Then... come Christmas Eve, BALTIMORE airport called... THEY HAD OUR LUGGAGE! and it had been there a few days. ....Our next obstacle was that we were leaving Pennsyltucky and heading to Ohio the Next Day.
Fortunately, They put our stuff in an overnight red Ford Pick-up. And on Christmas morning, Santa came ...with our luggage.
I'd like to add that... in the meantime, Jared and I had both bought ...new pants and shirts and under-roos... but now we had no where for it to fit. ...Let alone any presents we'd have to stuff here, there and everywhere (like... still in Ohio...)



Ready for our return flight?????
We are at the airport, a healthy 2+ hours early. But the check-in line was a mile long because the 6:30am flight was cancelled, so they were rebooking the world of angry passengers. Sooo we stood...and stood...and waited. And when we get to the counter, the lady tells us our reservations were cancelled because they...well they do that when you don't complete your earlier reservation (remember, we switched connecting flights from detroit to baltimore to ...detroit to harrisburg). Sooo we called customer service again, waited on hold again, talked to an asshole again until we hung up, called again, waited on hold again, talked to a nice person who gave us some number. We gave that to the lady at the counter. She said she found us. But our flight hasn't been paid for. Sooooo she calls around, we wait some more.... Then we ...survived and our flight back was nice.

:)

Happy Travels. (btw, that was...just ...a SUMMARY......)

Special Thanks To:

Jared's Dad and Rhonda who are very talented at being aggressive on the phone; and for giving us pajamas to sleep in.
Shuttle Driver who kindly shared his food - sorry we didn't have more cash for a tip.
Bobby-Jo from the Harrisburg airport who was the nicest to us on the phone and is helping us with luggage reimbursement stuff.
The Kind folks who gave us the free hotel room
Santa...for bringing us our luggage on Christmas

Jared's version may be on its way.