Round The World Report #1 - We're Off!

ExpressJet recently started service from Colorado Springs airport and we had decided to use them for the initial flight to San Diego, mainly because it's a direct flight, which is pretty unusual for any flights out of Colorado Springs. The majority of flights from our home city connect through hubs. So we arrive at the ticket counter and proudly announce that we, experienced world travelers on the trip of a lifetime, are here to permit your tiny little airline to take us on the first leg. To which the gate agents responded "Your flight left a half hour ago!" Hmm, I mused for a moment and then I pointed a finger at Mary and accused her in a loud and accusatory voice of ruining the whole trip.

It turned out to be a mistake anyone, even the famously well organized Mary, could make. We made the reservations for the trip to San Diego six months ago. From San Diego we would be taking Hawaiian Airlines to Kaua'i, where we would be using a bunch of Starwood points before a rate increase was implemented. We later decided to tack on the Round The World trip to this previously scheduled trip. Sometime during the interim the airline had contacted Mary and told her that our early afternoon flight had been rescheduled for late morning. Mary said fine. but forgot to change the ultra-organized spreadsheet she constructed detailing flights, hotels, meals, and I believe bathroom breaks during our trip. So we thought the flight departed at 1:30 pm but it actually departed at 11:00. Oops!

With hardly a second thought, Mary started trolling the other airline counters, attempting to get us another flight to San Diego so all of our (actually her) plans would not collapse like the proverbial house of cards. During the early part of the trip we are scheduled fairly tightly, so a change, intentional or otherwise, might have repercussions later down the road. Might miss a bathroom break or something.

With the liberal use of credit cards we were able to snag another flight on American. Of course now we had to go through Dallas, but with American all roads do indeed go through Dallas. This meant that we got to San Diego a lot later then we originally planned, but at least we were in place, ready for a day trip up to Disneyland in the morning.

The funny thing was a couple of nights previously we had been talking about the whole concept of just taking off with a credit card and seeing where the wanderlust takes us. Well, unless you have virtually unlimited money, what we found out was that it's a lot harder nowadays than it might have been once upon a time.