The longest two days

I still have two days to burn until I can fly out providing my passport arrives on Saturday morning. I spent Friday lounging around Kyle's place while he was at work and deep dived into reading book three of The Dark Tower by Stephen King which I reckon will be one of the best movies of all time if they ever create it. Kyle calls me and tells me he has to go out for a few happy hour drinks with a print vendor and since no one else could make it he asks if I want to tag along. I mean I worked for Pierce as of two days ago and intend on going back after my LOA so why not?. I still have a stack of business cards anyway.

They show up a little late with their significant others intending on doing nothing but showing us a good time in hopes that we'll continue to use them over Kinko's for all our poster and banner needs. They ordered us a few rounds of appetizers and about 5 rounds of beer and before you know it's nine o'clock and we're talking about this guy’s conception methods with his wife and ordering preseason Sox’s tickets. They take the check and give us a ride home and we continue to hit up a few additional bars.

We end up running into Kyle's roommate who's this 6"6" ex- Long Beach state water polo player at a local dive bar shooting pool. Pretty cool dude but kind of a egotistical douche bag most of the time, especially when he’s drunk. We're walking home from the bar (Mind you, at this point the Patriots are on their bye week on their way to the super bowl at a perfect 18-0) and this guys is going off about "Bele-cheat" this and "shady-Brady" that and ranting about how the Chargers should be in the super bowl HEE HAAW WAh WAH. Me being completely inebriated and forgetting this guy is twice the size of me tell him that Ladainian Tomlinson is a pu$4y for sitting out because he had a little knee problem and so on. His girlfriend chimes in and argues that they almost beat us because they scored 4 field goals. I start laughing and remind her that the last time I checked " field goals are only worth three points and you would have needed 8 of those to beat us". Kyle's roommate soon clenched his fist and lunged at me like he was going to bash my face into the pavement but luckily Kyle broke it off. That's pretty much all I remember about the night. That and we ended up going to Jack in the box. I hate Jack in the Box.

Saturday morning. Judgment day.

I wake up at 9:30 a nervous wreck praying the package containing my passport arrives. I check Fedex.com and my tracking number isn't listed. Not a good sign. 10:30 slowly comes around and still no knock on the door. At this point I'm near tears hating myself realizing everyone I know thinks I’m on another continent and could instead quite possibly be spending the next three weeks couch surfing in SoCAL. I walk outside for a good scream to let off some steam and am greeted by the FedEx lady who hands me my passport package. Awesome! Kyle and I go out for breakfast to a greasy spoon down the street and I give Jim a call to pick me up so Kyle can spend the day moving into his new condo. We go to a UCLA basketball game to kill some time and I have him drop me off three and a half hours before my flight hoping it will somehow help my chances.

I get my stand by ticket and ask the attendant what the odds are on getting on that night and she told me the flight has been oversold by 32 people and all of them are ahead of me in queue. I ask if I don't get on that night whether or not it improves my chances the next day and so on. “No not really” she says.

Not really. 3 and a half hours later it's 10:45 and everyone has boarded the plane. There's a couple next to me waiting on stand-by as well. Their connecting flight was late and were bumped off two days ago and have been waiting ever since. I ask the attendant if there's any way we're getting on and she mentioned there were empty seats but they had exceeded their weight restriction. I feel like I’m going to throw up but I swallow down the In-and-Out burger debris and give poor Kyle a call to come pick me up knowing that he's going to have to give me a ride back to the airport again the next day and the next day. The flight attendant lets the other two people on and I pray.

Please don’t leave me here god damn you. I don't care if I'm sandwiched between two fat old ladies and have to watch Norbit three times on the plane. Three excruciating minutes later my prayers are answered. The attendant calls me over and hands me a ticket. Sure enough I'm wedged between two fats dudes have nothing to look forward to on the movie guide but "The Golden Age" and "gone baby gone" and yet I couldn't be happier. I’m off to OZ baby!

Don't forget your passport!!!

Ok well the eagle has safely landed after a few minor setbacks. Once again I chose to work till the day I left and took off in a frenzy getting to the airport 45 minutes before departure, gotta love PWM. Thanks to my handy dandy check list I’m preeeeety sure I didn’t forget anything. Well I guess I’ll figure that out once I unpack hahaha ,uh…. yeah. Most importantly I have my passport in my pocket and the pertinent documents in my laptop case. God forbid I forget my passport. You’re pretty much SCREWED without that.

Ten or so hours later I arrive in Long Beach where Kyle picks me up. We head to the bars to meet up with Jim and Rids who I haven’t seen in years. We pounded a few drinks, reminisced about old times, took a walk on the most polluted beach in the universe and called it a night. Kyle was at work on Thursday so I spent the day wondering in and out of books stores around the LBC looking at picture books of Australia to put me in the mood for the 15 hour flight. Kyle came home around 6 so we had about an hour to kill before we head to LAX. My only last request was to hit up “In-and-Out burger” one more time for an order of animal style burger and fries.

We load everything in the car and I pat my jacket in the zipper pocket where my passport had been during the flight and…nothing. “Hmm I must have put it in my luggage”? After 45 minutes of checking every crevice of every bag and article of clothing I owned it was nowhere to be found. F########Ck! This isn’t happening right now!

THINK FAST!

It’s around 6:30 pm at this point and I don’t depart until 10:45 so there’s still hope. Kyle and I divide and conquere. He calls Jet Blue where I took my flight to Long Beach and I call my third party travel agent to see what would happen if I can’t make it on the flight.

Turns out Jet Blue has my passport but it’s in New York. Kyle tries to finagle them to fly my passport on the next flight but they’re not too keen on that idea. Kyle does manage to have Jet Blue send me my passport via Fedex but since pick up already happened, the soonest they could get it there is Saturday.

Meanwhile, my travel agent’s office was closed so I had to phone United. I explained my situation to two separate United agents who tell me two completely different scenarios. The first tells me if I call ahead and tell them I’m going to miss my flight there is still nothing I can do since I booked through a third party. Therefore the outgoing ticket and the return ticket would be nulled and I would be out $1,700. She also told me they’re sold out through February 8^th and flights after that cost over $2,000. Not good. The second person told me if I called ahead I could still have a credit for my flight but they were still sold out till February 8^th. Three weeks is a long time to couch surf.

I figure the best way to get answers I want to hear would be to call back again and ask for the manager and then the manager’s manager. This guy tells me they can credit my flight but the best way to handle this situation would be to go to the airport and talk to customer service. Stand-By is not allowed on international flights in most cases but there is a chance they can make an exception. So Kyle drives me to LAX and I put on a great show. They told me it was my fault I lost my passport and there is really no reason to make an exception. At this point I pretend to cry and tell her the reason I lost my passport was because I gave up my window seat for an old lady who had never flown before and left it in the seat pocket and if I can’t get to Australia in the next few days that I was going to lose my job.

Stand by granted.