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 8th 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 8th. 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.
