Friday --- the adventure begins

I spent most of today on mindless, last-minute tasks such as laundry (have this weird thing about leaving dirty laundry at home when I go on a trip), moving the necessities from my everyday purse to my vacation purse, spending an inordinate amount of time looking for Nessa’s passport holder that she lent to me (found it in the babies’ room --- of course, I put it down on the changing table when I took their clean laundry in to put it away) and, oh yeah, packing. I’m sure I packed way too much, but, oh well.

I jumped on the computer to check on our flight and found that it was delayed 1 hour, 10 minutes from the original departure date. I took that opportunity to sign up for updates about our flight that would be sent to my cell, called my brother (our ride to SFO) and was actually a little happy that I now had an extra hour at home. Dana being the nervous flyer he is, we planned on leaving our house 3 hours prior to the flight’s departure, not knowing what traffic would be, etc. Turned out traffic was inordinately light until just before we hit the airport, and the dreaded circle around the airport was practically deserted. By the time we got inside with our luggage, everyone was being directed to the self-service check-in kiosks. In hindsight, the fact that only 4-5 of the 20 or so kiosks were actually operational was a warning.

After ‘fessing up to the kiosk that we were checking in 2 bags ($15 each), we were immediately offerred an upgrade to first class, although for only the leg to LA. We decided to splurge, at which point the kiosk told us they wouldn’t charge us for the luggage --- a pretty good trade, we thought. Evidently, first class passengers don’t get charged for baggage ---- a fact unknown to us before now.

As it turns out though, only 2 of the 20 kiosks were actually capable of printing out luggage tags, so we were glad we had extra time. So, how many employees does it take to check in 2 pieces of luggage, you ask? Evidently on this airline it takes 4 --- 3 to stand around laughing and joking with each other and one to be totally frustrated with the non-working technology. After 15 minutes or so, our bags were checked in and we were ready to go through security.

I was still fumbling with where my passport was, and Dana was holding all the boarding passes, and even though there was no one behind us, the guy at the first check-point wasn’t amused, because he directed us to a little "holding area" to the side and called for back-up. After standing in our pen watching our fellow passengers breeze through to scan their luggage and shoes, we were ushered past them, to a "special" security check-point. At first, I thought it was the check-in for first class passengers, but no. . . sadly mistaken. After removing shoes, jewelry, etc. and sending everything through the scanner, we were ushered to a second pen, this time a totally glassed-in area with a locked door at the exit end. During this second move, my phone started ringing (another update from American, as it turns out).

So, there we stood in a glass enclosure with another couple I’ll call Mr. and Mrs. Mumbai, awaiting our special security check. Our carryon luggage was scanned thoroughly; my bag was declared as "having a lot of toiletries" in it. Then we were escorted to a third area, where we were patted down THOROUGHLY, and our carryon luggage inspected visually, every item removed and scrutinized.
Perhaps we jumped too quickly at the chance to travel first class, perhaps a warning bell should have gone off when Dana agreed to the extra, non-necessary charge. I’m half expecting to find Scott was responsible for our special treatment when we arrive in Puerto Rico.

At any rate, we laughed about having so much time before our flight departed, but the laughter soon stopped when I retrieved the voicemail notification from American telling us that our flight would depart another half our later. This is cutting our layover in LA down from the original 3 hours. We’re hoping there won’t be further delays, although I keep hearing Dale's dire warnings about flying on American Airlines. . .