More travel fun!

Well, my travel woes continue with this latest trip. I traveled to Harrisburg, PA for another home school convention. :) SO MUCH FUN! But I must tell the story before we get to the fun stuff. 

Jennifer and I left on Thursday with tickets to Philadelpia, PA and then a connecting flight to Harrisburg. We arrived early enough to get checked in, grab some lunch and wait a few minutes before boarding. Hey, this is going smoothly! We were seated together with Jennifer at the window. The sky was clear so we took a few pictures while circling over Atlanta and as we were getting in to Philly. Nice flight! Even with the guy in front of Jennifer pushing his seat beyond where it should have been so he could sleep for quite awhile. 

Arrive in Philly and learn we need to go from Terminal B to Terminal F. Finally find there is a shuttle to get us there. 30 minutes later we are at our new gate and sit to wait the 20 minutes for boarding. We watched our luggage get loaded. That's a good thing - we know it will get there with us.  Then we hear the words, "your flight has been delayed. Your new scheduled departure time is 5pm. We are waiting on a crew to arrive." Not very comforting to know they are still waiting on a crew to arrive.

We decide to go get something to drink and a small ice cream. YUM! Head back to the gate to eat the ice cream when we hear "Your flight has now been canceled." Oh! REALLY? And so now how do we get to Harrisburg? You can go to gate 16 or the ticket counter for a new flight. So, we go to the counter. I call CP who handles this stuff for the company to find out what she needs us to do. It's finally our turn and we ask what flight they can get us on since the sign behind her says there is one at 5:24. Nope. Nothing until 8:24pm. Well, okay. Are we guaranteed that flight? Yes, unless it cancels. Gee thanks.

Ummm... what else can you do for us being inconvenienced? Oh, a $5 meal voucher. Nice. What can you get to eat in an airport for $5? Well, that 6oz bag of peanuts was $4.49. Yeah. That's good when you are hungry and won't be meeting up with your group for an additional 4 hours or so and they will have already eaten. And who wants to eat dinner at 10pm?

I called CP back to let her know we had a flight. She decided it was too little too late and she will get us a car. It is only about 90 minutes to drive. Now we need to let them know we will not be getting on that flight. If we just don't show up they will cancel the rest of our trip. We head to the ticket counter and talk to a lady who was nice and marked that we would not be on that late flight and tells us we are good to go for Sunday. We ask where we might use the meal voucher. Well, you need to go back through security. NOT HAPPENING! Where do we find the car rental area? She told us and we were on our way.

Ok - now to get the shuttle bus to stop for us. Thank you very much! Off to the car rental lot. Stand in line in a hot building and finally it's our turn. Sign my life way for the deposit. Learn if you don't put gas in the car they charge you for a full tank even if you only need a few gallons. And get brief directions to get on the highway - not quite enough to get us to Harrisburg though. Also, we realize each of us had taken a GPS out of our bag since we wouldn't be driving on this trip. Won't make that mistake again!!

I drive and Jennifer calls to let CM (who was supposed to meet us originally and who is now meeting us as we return the car to pay the fee) know we are on the road. She has someone else with our team give directions to get us to Harrisburg. All is good. They are heading to dinner and we will eat before returning the car. It was a nice drive and we enjoyed ourselves.

We get in to the Harrisburg Airport area and start looking for a place to eat dinner. In about 4 miles through this little township we were in, we drive past about 8 bars. Many of them we notice are across the street from funeral homes. We laugh about it but we can't find anything for dinner except Hardee's. Good enough so we stop and eat. 

We call LD to let them know we are on our way to the airport. They are about 15 minutes away. Perfect. We pull in to return the car and realize we neglected to fill it up. We head back to the gas station, fill it up and drive back. Turn in the car, walk to the building and wait for CM and LD to show up so we can pay out and be on our way.

We go in and the lady behind the counter said her passcode just expired. She tries to use the other workers and it also expired and now both computers are locked up. We step to the side while they deal with locked up computers and try to help other customers. I guess it took a good 20 minutes. FINALLY we can pay for the rental and be on our way. 

The rest of the evening was uneventful except that Jennifer and I were tired but in that mode where you just can't fall asleep. We talked until after 2am. It sure made getting up at 6am a bit difficult. Breakfast at 6:30 and head to the convention just after 7am. We had a great day, was halfway to our goal and headed to Red Robin for dinner.  Back to the hotel and had a quiet evening, going to bed a bit early.

Back up at 6am to repeat the day. We finally closed the show over our goal and got the booth packed and headed to dinner. Sometimes the GPS doesn't know the BEST way to go. Really? Must we always take detour through the worst part of town? After circling a few blocks for the grand tour we get headed to Benihana. After waiting a little bit we were seated. On the floor on a flat pillow. Getting your legs under that table was fun. We were punchy from being tired. It made for a fun evening.

We watched the chef make our dinner which was delicious, even though the chef wasn't so great with his little show. There was a mix up with a raspberry lemonade where it came to the table a touch frothy and we discovered there was alcohol in it. Lots of jokes, including how the chef might have had a nip or needed one. 

Honestly, at this point I have laughed so hard I can't even remember all that happened. I'm sure friends who were there will comment to remind me. ;) We did finish our dinner which included your choice of ice cream or rainbow sherbet. For the record, that sherbet was the best ever and several said it tasted like Trix.

Time to head back to the hotel but first another detour through the bad part of town where there were barber shops still open after 9pm, several fried chicken places within a block or less of each other, and one that would even cash your checks for you. We had to stop at Starbucks as well. Some people are addicted to coffee. 

To the hotel and find out our room keys won't work. Had to get them reissued. In the room, pj's on and a quick check on facebook and email. Learned that there was a problem with our tickets not being synced or something. Jennifer calls and learns we do not have tickets even though we have paid for bags to be checked on this flight. Evidently THAT triggered them to notify us about 12 hours later that we didn't have seats on this flight. She gets it all cleared up (we hope) and now, we are on the flights and prayerfully headed home on time tomorrow.

Stay tuned! You never know what else will happen before July 31!