San Francisco Int’l Airport – Thursday May 11, 2017
I am usually using this space to write about our various RV adventures. But this time I will be making posts about a different kind of road trip we are about to embark upon. This time, the plan is for Elisa and I to travel across Italy, Germany and parts of Austria and France with my brother Trent (or should I say Trenton – more on this later) and his lovely wife Carolyn. This will be our first extended road trip together and nothing like a European vacation to put our relationship to the test. In the picture above, I’m the older and wiser one in the green shirt and Trent is the skinnier and better looking one in the purple shirt. But at the rate he’s going we are going to have to change that to simply the better looking one. But I digress.
The genesis of this road trip started back around Christmas 2016 when Elisa indicated that we were thinking about going to Italy to celebrate the wedding of one of her dearest cousins, Alessio Giorgerini. As fate would have it, Alessio has met the woman of his dreams, the only woman that could tame this free spirited Italian adventurer and multi-sport athlete. The nuptials are to be in late May, which is an excellent time to visit and tour Italy. Although Elisa, I and the kids have been to Italy many times, we hadn’t ventured over for several years and what better excuse to go back to Italy than the wedding. It was at a family gathering when Carolyn, my brother Trent’s wife said she would be retiring from her job in May and maybe they could come with us. Thus the planning for the epic trip would begin. Carolyn is part Italian and she has never traveled to Italy so she was stoked. So she quickly signed up for a 3 week tour of Italy and other parts of Europe with us. There was the little detail that although she is retiring, my brother has another few years of work to “look forward to”, to which Carolyn said to Trent, I think jokingly, "I hope you can make the trip with us". So, with some finagling of his work schedule and pooling all of his available vacation time, we were very pleased that Trent would be joining us.
Let the planning begin. Elisa and I said we would work out an ambitious road trip itinerary that would give them a broad view of the beautiful countryside of Italy and we would also work in some time in Bavaria. Our road and walking trip would take us to Rome, the Amalfi Coast, the Cinque Terre, Tuscany, Lake Como, Venice and up into Germany. Carolyn, who among her many talents was a travel and event coordinator for a large organization and she volunteered to take responsibility for arranging accommodations. I would be responsible for arranging tours and ground transportation, Elisa would plan the social events with our family and friends along the way and Trent only had to coordinate their airfare arrangements to coincide with Elisa and my travel plans. With the 5 months we had to plan we had plenty of time to get it right. What could possibly go wrong?
So, now let’s fast forward to the day before our trip. I sent Trent a text to let him know that I was able to get Elisa and I checked in using the United app. It’s pretty neat, it lets you scan your passport allowing you to bypass checkin lines. Trent quickly texted back that he had downloaded the app and has them partially checked in – he would have to finish up later that night when he got home and ahold of the passports. Carolyn and Trent happened to have a very busy day and night on the eve of our trip and it wasn’t until about 10:30 in the evening when he was able to scan their passports. With a little bit of effort he was able to get Carolyn’s passport scanned and her check-in confirmed. However he ran into some problems with his passport. He has always gone by the name of Trent. We all call him Trent, his friends all call him Trent, everyone calls him Trent; by golly his plane tickets even say Trent. Unfortunately, Uncle Sam may be the only person that doesn’t call him Trent. They prefer to use his complete name – Trenton. Who would think that and “o” and an “n” could be such a big deal. Well, to United Airlines and the TSA it is a big deal. You see, he was unable to complete his check-in because the name on the passport – Trenton – did not match the name on the plane ticket -Trent.
So, by now it is 11:00pm and they have to leave their home by 5:30am to make their way to the airport. Initially, Trent thinks this can’t be such a big deal, I’ll just take care of it in the morning. It’s a good thing he decided to dial that 1-800 number on the website. Upon dialing the number and through the miracles of modern technology, he was promptly connected to a woman somewhere in a call center in India. The woman spoke with the familiar sing-song tone we have all heard before. She had a pleasant voice and the name of a goddess – Minerva. After explaining the situation to Minerva, Trent realized it was probably a good thing he didn’t wait for the morning to come to work on this problem – because Minerva’s first words were “oh oh – this is bad”. You may have heard about this in the news, United has a business practice of booking far more passengers on a flight than there are actually seats. It’s aptly referred to as overbooking. Minerva explains that to fix this problem, she will have to release the seat reserved for Trent and cancel his ticket and reissue the ticket to Trenton and “hope” that the seat is still there when she reissues the new ticket. It’s the only way this can be resolved. Trent could hear the clicking of computer keys. Then the pleasant voice of Minerva came back on the line, “oh oh – this is really bad”. To a traveler trying to get on an international flight the next day, those words were like moving to the frying pan to the fire.
While Trent was struggling to get on the morning flight, it wasn’t as if Elisa were progressing toward our departure date without a few problems of our own. On the Monday prior to our Thursday departure Elisa had gone for a long walk with one of her walking buddies. She thought this would help prepare her for all the walking we had plans for on our vacation. That evening, Elisa realized that she may have pinched a nerve or pulled a muscle, because the next day she could barely walk. This was a potential disaster, we had extensive walking tours in Rome scheduled on Friday and Saturday. If Elisa couldn’t walk it would really disrupt our plans. On Tuesday she mentioned the problem she was having to the contractor doing work at our house. He proclaimed that he had the miracle cure. He dashed home and returned with an innocuous salve with a funny smell in an unmarked plastic container. As sketchy as it looked, Elisa was desperate, so she decided to try it. Low and behold by Wednesday she was feeling a little better. But we weren’t out of the woods just yet. On Wednesday we decided to have Mexican food for lunch with our nephew who would be house and pet sitting for us. As fate would have it Elisa found herself in the bathroom most of the night before our Thursday 6:30 am departure for the airport. By the time she headed for bed that night, she was very worried that if she felt this bad in the morning we would be in jeopardy of missing our Thursday morning flight. Fortunately, I was not impacted by the Mexican food earlier that day. I drifted off to sleep pretty easily but would be awakened by our dogs at 2:00am. Perhaps they could sense something was going on. They ended up keeping me awake most of the night. So maybe I’m already on European time.5:15 am rolled around pretty quickly. Elisa was up and about. The pain in her hip had seriously subsided, almost good as new. Her tummy was still a little touchy but she thought she would be ok. So off we headed to the airport.
“Oh oh – this is really bad” we’re not the words Trent wanted to hear. Now what else could be wrong. Our pleasant voiced Minerva explained that to make matters worse, because Trent’s and Carolyn’s tickets were linked, Minerva has to also release Carolyn’s seat. Keep in mind that at this point in time Carolyn believes she is comfortably booked with a first class seat on a flight to Italy to take the dream vacation that she has spent the past 5 months planning. Also remember, she somewhat jokingly told Trent back in December that she was going with us and “hoped” that Trent could join us. All of this raced through Trent’s mind as he struggled with what to do. So Trent using the wisdom of a man that has been happily married for 20+ years did what any husband in the same situation would do. He decided not to tell Carolyn that he was going to cancel her seat and reservation, put her trip in jeopardy and “hope” that sweet voiced Minerva could work it all out. With that decision made Trent tells Minerva to go for it. Again he hears the tic tac of nails on keys. “The seats are released”, he hears and now Minerva works to reissue the ticket to “Trenton”. Suddenly she realizes that the reason the ticket was issued in the name Trent is because the reservation was made through United Mileage plus portal. The portal is set up in the name of Trent and it auto-populates the name on the ticket. Quickly, Minerva gets an agent on the line from the United Mileage plus portal, they work together with Trent on the line and they reestablish his mileage plus account with the right name. (After all, no one wants to lose out on miles from a European vacation.) But precious time has elapsed. As Trent listens to Minerva working furiously, he thinks to himself, what’s the worse thing that could happen? Maybe, we just won’t be sitting together in first class. As the seconds tick away, he thinks – oh oh, what if we end up in economy because our first class seats have been given to someone else. More seconds tick away and he thinks, what if there are no more seats on the plane and we are among the hordes of nameless “overbooked” passengers “hoping” to get a seat on the plane. More seconds tick away and now he has visions of a YouTube video of the two of them being assaulted by United crew members and being forcibly dragged of the ……..“We got it!” says the sweet sounding Minerva. The YouTube video playing in Trent’s mind quickly evaporates and he is filled with relief. As Trent and Carolyn finally head off to bed, Carolyn asks, “did you get that thing taken care of” and Trent calmly replies, “sure no problem”.
With a start to a trip like that, what could possibly go wrong.
Thursday morning at 9:00 am, we meet up at the airport and are all laughing about the near disaster, and only then does Carolyn find out that she to was at risk. We think about the 2 hour layover we have in Chicago and how nice it will be to check out the new Polaris lounge there. Suddenly a flight update rolls through from United onto our phone. Our 2 hour layover has become a 30 minute layover – what could possibly go wrong.
Thursday afternoon at 2:00pm – mid flight on our way to Chicago, the flight attendant tells Elisa that the only food choices available are Tandori Chicken. After the episode with the Mexican food from the day before we decide that this is probably not the best choice for Elisa. The second option is Lobster Mac-n-cheese, did I mention she’s gluten intolerant? What could possibly go wrong.
Thursday evening 5:45 CST on final approach to Chicago. We discuss that we are disappointed with the 30 minute lay over but take comfort that we will be landing at gate B16 and our flight to Rome will be departing from B17. No problem making the connection. Then once we touch down, the flight attendant says that because of a maintenance issue the jet at B16 has not left the gate, we will now be landing at gate C16; a much longer trek to B17. The flight attendant says we know a lot of you are on the Rome flight – “I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t hold the flight for you, but we can’t guarantee it”. Gee, what could possibly go wrong.
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