Back to my “Home” away from home!

VA Beach baby! Spending a week with Amy (Pot) and the kiddos..and the wild wild kittahs too! Time for “Recovery Time” which is a lot of relaxing, wine, shopping, laughing and crying I’m sure.

Trip got off to a rough start this morning. I like to fly the 7am flights out of Tampa, it’s easy to get in and out of (usually) and there is almost never any traffic, could be because the 7am flights I take are Sundays. Anyways, I dropped the dogs and my truck off at my friend’s house, he took me to the airport, and all was smooth.

I planned on checking ONE bag, carrying on ANOTHER and had a laptop bag and a special bag for Amy with lots of break-ables and sentimental stuff for her birthday/feel better presents (since her mamma passed) Well I curbside check the poke-a-dot bag, its heavy and the guy is right there. Its $22 to check it. He tells me I might need to check one more, I pass.

I get upstairs to get on to the train to go to the terminal. There are two women checking boarding passes, and the one to the right is the one I went to. She tells me I can’t take 3 bags, only 2 on US Airways. I’ve never been told this, well, Uh, aside from what the guy down stairs said, but other than that I haven’t. She told me I had to go check one of them. Ugh, fine. She was shitty about it too. I go back down stairs to check another bag, I decide to check the bag of break-able stuff, the other option was my black Nike gym bag which was packed with 20+ shot glasses for Amy and my new Camera which I won’t let out of my sight.

The lady fights me on what I want to check, and is trying to persuade me to check the Nike bag, I refuse. $30 to check the break-able bag, Whatever, I just want to go, its 6:15 the flight leaves in 45 minutes, I need to go back upstairs.

I decide to go to the one to the left this time, since I am bitter at the lady to the right. Wrong choice! You know how they have the carry on “example” where you theoretically put your bag into the space provided to see if it fits?

I’ve never seen ANYONE have to put their bag in this damn thing…until now. The lady tells me in some sort of broken English to fit my bag into that tiny metal space. Clearly it’s not going to fit. I over packed as usual. My reasoning behind this bag was, I ALWAYS see people with huge duffle bags as carry ons. Well I have to try, it sits on top of the “allotted” space just fine, and then she’s trying to get me to take things out. Which isn’t going to work, I don’t have any space to put it. I have a laptop bag with me, which is full of 2 laptops; there isn’t any room in there as is. So, I try to take out the Camera and the camera bag since it’s bulky. Fail. Now I have 3 bags and I can fit the Nike bag which is good, but I made another bag by pulling out the camera bag and the lady is telling me that won’t work, I GET THAT! I keep trying to get her to let me go and I will adjust it at the gate, somehow. She says no, I’m angry at this point.

After what felt like forever, I assume it’s been less than five minutes; she looks at my boarding pass again, and tells me to go to the gate.

Security takes a little bit to go through since people can’t pull their laptops out and put their shoes back on and get out of the way, typical!

I get to the gate just as the last few people are boarding, Great. I see a guy with a bigger bag than mine to the right of me since there are two people checking in, his bag got pulled and has to be gate checked, so I tuck mine off to the side, go to the gal to the left hoping to sneak by with my bag. She takes my ticket, gives it back and I walk through the doors to get started down to the plane. I exhaled shew! I won.

Then she must have looked back after I passed through, She told me to come back I had to check that, it’s too big, I was upset, here we go again, Not only do I have to check bag THREE but now I don’t have time to repack it. She fills out the ticket since I have a plane change in Charlotte; I grab the camera and bag out of it, and let them take it. Ugh, I was ALMOST there!!
The good news is, I didn’t have to pay for that bag.

Oh well, on the plane, time to start reading the new book “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”