NEVER Fly Airtran, Especially through Atlanta

We are in Boston this week for business. When I booked our flights we originally booked a multi city ticket for each of us because we were heading some place else after the business trip. To get decent flight times, etc. I had to book on Airtran and go through Atlanta. I ended up changing the mutli city to just a round trip, but that is neither here nor there, we were still booked on the original Airtran flight connecting through Atlanta to Boston. Here is how things went

1) Get to airport. Check in. The screen on the kiosk says that we owe $31.00. When I ask the Airtran agent why he says EXACTLY this "Because it says you do". Now, you hopefully can see where I may have been a bit pissed off. He gave us tickets, never giving us a seating choice and we are stuck with aisle and middle the whole route. Take off on time from home.
2) Land in Atlanta, 20 minutes after we landed we get to our gate
3) While looking for something to eat during our layover (which was 1 hour and 18 minutes, which was now only 58 minutes due to our delay getting to the gate) we noticed that they switched the gate that we were supposed to fly out of. The original gate still saying it was the correct one, but the screens were saying differently
4) Go all the way to concourse D via tram that almost gave us both whiplash
5) Now have 30 minutes to get something to eat before boarding. Choose Burger King. Healthy, I know. That was an experience in itself
6) Go to gate, eat at gate, start boarding
7) They board the first 3 rows. They board the last 3 rows. The board the middle 4 rows. Now everyone else can board. Of course that was an experience since it MAKES NO F**KING sense.
8) Get into our seats. My honey's seat is broken. When I say broken I mean it was like him sitting on a hill. Sideways. We ask to move, she moves us up one row to an exit row. Bonus. More leg room.
9) Again, his seat is broken. The hill thing. He is miserable. I offer to switch, but then he would be stuck in the middle. We make due
10) Sit on the runway for AN HOUR waiting to get out of Atlanta. Take off 63 minutes late.
11) Arrive in Boston 53 minutes late. Get off plane. Go to baggage claim.
12) Still at baggage claim
13) still at baggage claim, oh wait, an announcement.... "The luggage is still being unloaded from the plane, it will be another 10 minutes."
14) Go outside to smoke a cigarette. It has now been 40 minutes since we landed.
15) Go back to baggage claim. 10 more minutes. Ohhhhh, 1 bag comes out. Now count to 4 to yourself. Ohhh another bag comes out. Now count to 4 to yourself. Ohhh another bag comes out.
16) After 45 minutes at baggage claim we finally had our piece of luggage, which we would have just carried on if we didn't have to bring, you know, necessities - toothpaste, colognes, etc.
17) Cab ride, 30 minutes late at hotel.
18) Bottle of vodka, 8 cans of soda, Monday Night Football, all is good.

Note: The not so funny thing is that one of our friends was flying Airtran through Atlanta as well yesterday. We got a text message from him at 6 p.m. saying that he was stuck in Atlanta. An hour later he was stuck until the morning. This morning, you guessed it, he is STILL in Atlanta at NOON today. Yes, Airtran + Atlanta = Drinking

K.P.

Underdogs Who????

All of this talk about the Cardinal's being the underdogs . . . huh, didn't look like it last night. We were out and about on Thursday night for a bit and everyone that we talked to agreed that Detroit was not only going to "win the World Series", but win it in 4 games. This is the problem with people who watch sports. They watch "their team" and pay no attention to the other teams. Although in different leagues, ESPN doesn't only talk about the American League on their sports shows. Why do people do this?? What really makes no sense to me are the reporters. How can they say such things as "Detroit will win it in 3?" In 3??? What in the hell is that?

Anyway, Cards are up 1-0 going into tonight! We couldn't be happier. We have an early flight in the morning, but that won't stop us from staying up until 11:30 to watch the game.

Go Cards!!!

K.P.

National League Champs!!!

Well, the St. Louis Cardinals won last night becoming the National League Champions. World Series here we come. What an intense game last night! Whew.

My honey, like I have mentioned before, has just recently over the past couple of years gotten into baseball. This year however he is a baseball nut. Between watching baseball last night, watching him react to the game and tolerating the worse sinus headache that I have ever had - I was exhausted!!! Too cute though. The yelling at the t.v., the pitching analysis... all hilarious.

Congrats to the Cardinals!

World Series, Game 1, Saturday!!!

K.P.

Pray for the Cardinals

There is nothing else to say other than "PLEASE pray for the St. Louis Cardinals tonight!"

Thanks.

K.P.

Oh yeah, and they should take Scott Rolen out.

Cards Up 3-2 in Series

Woo Hoo!! The St. Louis Cardinals won last night in game 5 of the NLCS. The are headed back to New York tonight. They play at 8 p.m. EST. Hopefully they will win and we will go to the World Series which starts on Saturday!!

Go Cards!!!!!

K.P.

Hold the Phone

So remember that post from yesterday when I said something about losing my fantasy football game this weekend . . . well hold the phone, you aren't going to believe this one! After all of Sunday's game were completed I has thought I had lost 67-72. I was down by 5 points and had no players in the Monday night game, my opponent did. He had QB Rex Grossman. Can you believe that Rex Grossman scored -7 points. That is NEGATIVE 7 points! I ended up WINNING 67-65.

Unbelievable. Truly.

Thank you fantasy football gods. I left beer and bratwurst out last night. :-)

K.P.

Weekend Updates

Happy Monday!

We had a great weekend of sports. My St. Louis Cardinals (born there) (not at the St. Louis Cardinals, in St. Louis) advanced to the NLCS for the National League. Woo Hoo! They however got spanked last night by the Mets, but the series is tied 2-2 now. My honey started getting into baseball with me a couple of years ago, now he is HOOKED! Oh and speaking of spanked, I once again got spanked in Fantasy Football this week. No need to discuss that but the move of the week for me though was starting Philip Rivers at QB - nice! Unfortunately, he could not carry my ENTIRE TEAM.

Moving on . . . . let me just say that moving a fish tank is a HORRIBLE idea. Horrible. We moved our fish tank for the first time since we got it about a year ago. Fish weren't happy, honey wasn't happy and Doberman very unhappy. She for some reason is extremely freaked out by the fish, so moving them to a new spot in the living room is taking some getting used to. I wish that there was something that would make moving a fish tank much easier. Besides taking out some of the water, did that, didn't really make a difference. The difference was something like hurting yourself to the point where you are sore compared to giving yourself a hernia. So I guess it did make a difference. My honey is not a manual labor guy, he would rather hire people to move the fish tank - swear to god. "Why don't we just call somebody?" Seriously.

Have to travel next week. Boston. Hope it isn't snowing. Hope that we don't have any weather delays at the airport. Hope that It is above freezing, which would mean that it wouldn't be snowing. Hope that we can upgrade so I don't get bruised knees from the 312 lb woman sitting in front of me when she hurls her seat back. That is pretty much all I have to say on that.

We tried to have a nice relaxing weekend to catch up and it was!

K.P.

The 6:15 a.m. Updates

It's 6:15 am and I have been up since 2 a.m. My honey wasn't feeling good in the middle of the night, so I woke up with him. Unfortunately, he was the only one that could fall back asleep after being up for 30 minutes. So, I do what I always do and start on the work for the day. I am about halfway there. I have to spend another hour on the phone I am sure today trying to change a plane ticket from multi city to round trip - the ought to be fun. Really excited about that one which you should understand after reading my last post.

Good news for me!! I won my first fantasy football game this week! By 25 points may I add and guess who it was against . . . uh huh, my honey. Classic. I was 12th pick this year so my team isn't ass good as it could have been. It would be nice if I got some consistent help from Tom Brady and they would stop benching guys for the entire game just because they fumbled the ball. Geez, aren't they professionals? Anyway, I was excited about that on Sunday. Really though, I was kind of rooting for him since I was 0-4 going into this past week. He has a much better chance of winning the whole thing. Again. Just like last year. :-)

Other than the above, it has been a bit of a crazy couple of weeks. Busy travel month ending and having company in town I think are still throwing off my schedule, hence the reason for being up since 2 a.m. All is good though. I am looking forward to getting back to "normal" whatever that may be. We only have one small trip at the end of this month which is good. It is pretty bad when you don't want to travel for the holidays because you have been doing nothing but traveling for the last two months. We had to pick up our friend who was just in town from the airport and I did nothing short of begging not to have to go into the airport to pick him up. Blahhhhhhh. I gave in though. Of course. :-)

K.P.

United Airlines Sucks

So here is the situation. We are flying United Airlines on Oct. 2. Upon checking in we purchase upgrades. We have a connecting flight through Chicago. Upon Waiting at the gate to board we hear the announcement "if anyone has a connecting flight, please come to the podium right away as there are major delays in and out of Chicago." We then do so, waiting in line for 15 minutes. The attendant says that there is NO WAY that we will make our connecting flight into Chicago and that by the time that we did get to Chicago, there would be no flight to home - our final destination. She then cancels out United flight and books us on an American flight. She gets our luggage tag numbers and says she is going to pull our luggage off of that flight and put it on the American flight. Also that we needed to hurry because we still had to go back thorough security, check in at the American counter, go back through security and get to the gate. All of this in 20 minutes. My honey asked about the purchased upgrades and she said that she was canceling the ticket right then and that we should not be charged for the upgrades we had just purchased since we were not using them, etc. We get to the American counter and ask if we can upgrade there, even though we already paid for the United Flight and she says NO, because the United attendant booked us on a non-refundable flight, and that wasn't an option. Anyway, today I did the whole checkbook reconciliation thing and sure enough - the money for the upgrades was deducted from our account. Yes, I took 3 deep breaths. Before I called them.

Here starts the United sucks ordeal. . .

1st Call - To information for United Airlines Customer Service
2nd Call - To United Airlines customer service. I had to press "0" 5 times before I could even get a person that I could barely understand. I then told that I am calling the right department, that his computer was having problems and could I hold while he rebooted - I said yes. About 10 seconds later, I am disconnected.
3rd Call - back to customer service, where I had to press "0" 5 times to get a person who I have to explain everything to and then tells me that I am NOT calling the right department, that I need to call the refund department.
4th Call - To the "refund department" - BUSY
5th Call - To the "refund department" - BUSY and YES it was an 800 number
6th Call - To the "refund department" - BUSY
7th Call - To the "refund department" - automated answer - press "0" at least 8 times before I am connected with someone. I then get a woman that I again, can barely understand what she is asking me. I give her all of the details, ticket numbers, explanation, etc. She is seeing EVERYTHING that I am telling her on the computer. EVERYTHING. The ticket, the upgrade purchase, the cancellation, the rebooking - EVERYTHING. She then tells me that I have TO MAIL IN THE RECEIPT. Send a letter along with the receipt and they will receive it, read it and the will be an investigation into the refund.

Are you F**CKING kidding me? She has everything right in front of her. She even had the CC number that the upgrades were purchased with. She probably even saw that our bags were lost because of them for 3 DAYS.

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable!

Ok, I am done, and United Airlines STILL sucks.

K.P.

Home Away From Home Is Now WiFi'd

This is a funny story. We of course have our favorite hang out a.k.a. "home away from home." Prior to moving here last year we had our "home away from home" there too. Now we have had BOTH home away from homes wifi'd. Hilarious. We do spend a ton of money there, so they should wifi since we probably will pay for it in a week's time. I, we, just think that it is funny that the last two places that we call our "home away from home" have wifi'd for us. Now many more Sundays will be spent up there with our friends since we can check our fantasy football scores!

K.P.

We're Back, Luggage Isn't

We are finally back from this span of travel. Sorry about the delay of game on the posts. We had a great trip, both business and some relaxation afterwards. It was of course interesting. We had no problems in San Francisco for once, although if you ever want to go to a 49ers game and you are staying downtown it can be a little tricky. Traffic is a MESS getting there. There are only 3 options. Drive your rental car if you have one, take the bus, or take a cab. Well, we did not rent a car, aren't really bus people, so we took a cab. The route, well, let's just say that I think the neighborhood in the t.v. show Good Times was much better. We left early to get started with our business events, so traffic wasn't a problem, but we got a nice tour of the "scenery."

We traveled to the Midwest after San Fran. We had no problems except getting home. Hence the title of this post. We arrived at the airport 2 hours early of course. 20 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off, we noticed there was no plane at the gate. We then heard that Chicago was having a TON of rain, wind and storms. We had to travel through O'Hare to catch our connecting flight home. Wasn't going to happen. Finally an announcement came over the intercom that anyone traveling and connecting in Chicago needed to come up to the podium. This we did. There was NO WAY with the delays that we would catch our connecting flight. They then booked us on another flight on another airline that was leaving in 40 minutes. They took down our luggage tag numbers, called down and had them take our luggage off of that flight and put on the other. Originally we were on United, they booked us on American. We had to RUN back out all the way to the American Ticket counter. This is where we met the BIGGEST BI**H that you have ever seen. We then had to go back through security and oh, guess what, we had the SSSS on our tickets, so we had to go through the whole search thing. Yes, they tell us to run, put us on a flight that is already boarding and then issue us tickets with the SSSS on them. Wonderful. We are given seats, each of us in the middle but in different rows. We took care of that, sat together. The flight went good until we got in and went to baggage claim. NO BAGS. Not a one of them. Nada. Zip. Nothing. We then had to go to the American Baggage counter where we had to fill out a report. A little difficult since we had United baggage numbers and the flight that we were on STILL had not left it's original flight.

We are still luggageless now at 11:40 a.m. It is missing. With the security issues now the checked luggage contains all of out toiletries, colognes, perfumes, etc. Nice, really nice.

Have I mentioned yet that I absolutely despise O'Hare airport. There is always something at this airport. Always.

K.P.