LEX

travel log

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
4:30am: wake up, shower, and get my (overweight) bags in the car
5:45am: head to DFW International Airport
6:10am: arrive at the Continental check in and attempt to, well, check-in
6:20am: i am told my bags are too heavy and Continental cannot check overweight bags international (information that would have been useful to have on the website on MONDAY)
6:45amish: the lady at Continental contacts American (because I have a layover and airline change at JFK) to see if they can accept the bags. they can.
7:00am: pay Continental's domestic overweight baggage fee ($75) and now have to reclaim my and re-check my baggage in New York
7:55am: take-off for Houston

The flight to Houston, the Houston Airport and the flight to New York were uneventful.

3:30pm: arrive at JFK and have only 1hr 45min to reclaim and re-check baggage

4:00pm: reclaim my baggage (flight takes off at 5:20)
4:05pm: get on an elevator and am told that check-in is on level 4, so i proceed to level 4
4:10pm-4:30pmish: search level 4, terminal 4, for American, only to find out that American is actually at terminal 8, on the complete other side of the airport
4:50pmish: arrive at terminal 4, gate 1, only to find that boarding had been closed
4:51pm: PANIC!!!!!!!!
5:00pmish: after calling my dad, i proceeded to the American ticket counter to try to get on the next flight
-every flight for that day is booked, so i get a standby ticket for 6am, check-in begins at 2:30am
5:30pmish: search for and find a place to park myself and my 100's of lbs of luggage near an outlet so i can charge my phone
-proceed to make phone calls for about an hour to pass the time.
7:00pmish: get some dinner and find a table in the good court at which to crash.
8:00pmish: decide to park outside of the check-in line
9:00pmish: decide this is not very comfortable, so i reclaim my food court table
11:00pmish: food court closes, so i return to my pole outside of the check-in line
11:00pmish-2:30am: people watching, computer games, attempting to sleep, memorizing all the airline regulations, learning that i am not allowed to smoke in the terminal, that i am only allowed one carry-on and one personal item, such as a purse, laptop, or briefcase, listening to my ipod, reading, talking to a few more friends who were gracious enough to check in on me
2:30am: check-in, then wait for security to open
4:00am: security opens and i, along with way too many other people, proceed through the line
4:30am: more waiting, but this time INSIDE security and with the hopes of actually being able to board
5:15am: boarding begins, but my name is not called (flight departs at 6:00am)
5:50am: check with ticket counter and, praise the Lord, am told to board
6:00am: depart for Santiago
9:30amish: arrive in Santiago
-my baggage actually arrived with this flight
-the Jim White (more about the White's will come later), along with Byron and Jen (Makarios Summer Staffers) were there to pick me up
-we proceed to the White's house to meet up with Ruben and Rafael (more about them later, too) who take us to the Makarios houst in Puerto Plata

stay tuned for real stories to go along with these boring, though thorough, travel log.

posted by Alexia & Jeffrey @ 7:53 PM