8 Ways to Have the Travel Day(s) from Hell
Wake up in the fetal position and not being able to stand up for 2 minutes without wanting to throw up. You try for 6 hours to figure out how you will make it to the airport and travel for 24+ hours while this sick.
You want to travel but cannot even pack your bags, so you have your wife pack your bags for you.
You arrive to the airport and once checking in the customer service agent says you are not booked for the flight. She then finds you but says your last name is missing 4 letters at the end and your ticket is booked as “BRADLEY WILL” not “BRADLEY WILLIAMS”. The customer service agent canNOT change it, and says the agency you booked through must change it. You contact the agency and they say only the airline can change it.
You must make a trip and the cheapest way to do it last minute is using frequent flyer miles. Only way to get there is in business class, so you are forced to upgrade and use 120,000 miles + $300 to make it to your destination.
When your flight lands right next to baggage claim and it takes them 45 minutes to get your bags to you, leaving only 1 hour and 15 minutes to recheck bags and make flight. Only to make it to customer service counter to not have an agent in sight, so you miss your flight and must overnight in Beijing.
Flight Delays: Typically not all that bad if you have lounge access, but when they make you miss your flight connection and you have to overnight in Beijing, they really suck. They suck even more after you have overnighted and then the rebooked flight leaves 3 hours late of scheduled departure.
During the process of walking 100 meters from an elevator to a taxi your phone is either dropped and not returned to lost and found, or your phone was stolen in those 100 meters or while loading the taxi. Said phone also had a few credit cards, driver license, and Military ID Card in it.
When you go to rebook your flight that was missed the night before (you had to wait till the morning because of course no one was around at 2am) you get the run around. The run around, literally, Air China blamed United, United blamed Air China, and of course they were on separate floors and separate ends of the airport, which means lugging your bike and luggage back and forth.
That was all of the bad that happened on this most recent trip to China. And to top it off my wife and son were back home with the flu and there was nothing I could do to help. However, from when I arrived to the race hotel until the time I left the race hotel the trip was GREAT! Great venue, great experience, and a pretty solid race. So more to come on that later this week. But with how uneventful travel was last year, I guess I cannot complain too much that this trip was the “perfect storm” of events. Anyone have any travel stories from hell that can top that?
