Bright Wedding - Part 1 - Airport Woes

I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I was heading out to California on Tuesday night so that I could participate in the daylong bachelor party event on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the plans did not work out as intended.

My flight to San Francisco had a connection in Washington DC. Unfortunately, flights in and out of DC were delayed all evening due to bad weather on the east coast. As a result, my flight arrived to DC two hours late, which caused me to miss the last flight of the night to San Francisco, which managed to leave on time.

I spent the next two hours dealing with customer service. I think at least half of the people in line were trying to get to the San Francisco area, so my flight probably left behind a large number of passengers. Working with customer service was a grueling process, but I was able to get United to provide me with a meal voucher, a $150 travel voucher on a future United flight, and a complimentary business class upgrade on the first flight that left the next day for San Francisco (still not sure how I scored that last benefit). Unfortunately, they could not get me a voucher for a hotel room that night since all neighboring hotels were already completely booked. Given that United could have copped out and said I was SOL because my original delay was weather related, they did a wonderful job addressing my situation.

However, I was still stuck spending the night at the airport terminal. By the time I had worked out all the details, it was after 1AM. I’d rather sleep in the terminal than spend 1-2 hours finding a hotel room and only getting about 1-2 hours of sleep before traveling back to the airport. Amazingly, I was able to salvage 4 hours of sleep at my gate, despite the constant PA announcements/warnings about leaving my baggage unattended and calling police if I see anything specific. Yes, those announcements are still run throughout the overnight hours when no flights are actually coming in or out of the airport.

Flying business class across the country was amazing. It’s so easy to sleep through an entire flight when your seat reclines all the way back!! They even give you real pillows and normal sized blankets as opposed to the small pieces of cloth in coach.

Although I was able to eventually get to San Francisco, I did not arrive in time to make the whitewater rafting trip. I was really bummed out about this since I was looking forward to that part of the trip, but I was still able to enjoy the rest of the bachelor party extravaganza.

Coming soon – Part 2, What happens in Tahoe, stays in Tahoe