Houston, we have a problem. So, recently, Val noticed that the Super Bowl is being played in Houston this year, on February 5th. And she said 'hey wait, that date and place seem familiar' and realized that is the date we are transferring through Houston on our way to Costa Rica. We land around 8:50am and the game is that afternoon. Hmmm, I ponder this and come up with the conclusion that George Bush Airport is going to be a 'fill in your own swear word' GONG SHOW!
But more worrisome than the airport is the flight from San Francisco to Houston. It is a red eye so game goers may very well be booked onto that plane. And, if United's reputation is anything to go on, that plane will probably be oversold. And who is going to get bumped, the girls who show up an hour before their flight using the cheapest tickets in the world.
So, first I tried to call Air Canada because I love a good 'how AC is awful' story for my blog. But all I got was a message that due to terrible weather and cancelled flights all over North America, the queue to talk to an agent is even longer than usual (who knew it was possible). So, I decided to go for the face to face. We bought our tickets through Flight Centre. There is a Flight Centre at the mall so I popped by on my way home form work.
Sarah was my agent de jour. I told my super bowl tale of woe. She had the decency to look aghast at our situation. Her advise, make sure we had seats reserved. All of our United flights allowed us to pre-book seats so we already had them so that is good. And we have to make sure we check in online 24 hours in advance. We can do that. She also noticed we didn't have seats booked on the Air Canada legs of our trip (Vancouver to San Francisco and return). They were going to charge us for seat selection. She called them up and got us seats. Clearly Sarah was my new hero so I decided to push my luck. I told her after scouring the tickets and the United website, I still couldn't actually say how much our bag allowance is. It took her a few minutes but she found it, one checked bag, one carry on bag, one personal bag. Yeah!. And she gave me the weights and dimensions.
We plan to only take carry on bags on the way down. I have been prepacking my new cubes all week and tonight I shoved them all in my backpack. They fit! With bits of room to spare, not much, but better than bursting at the seams. Plus, that is just the backpack, the zip-on day pack is empty. So, that gives room for random purchases (which of course, are highly unlikely - I need that sarcasm emoji, I'll make one up, here it is :}. Wait, I just discovered that blogger has emojis, 😏 They call this smirking face, but for the purposes of this blog, it is now sarcastic face. Has this parenthetic side discussion gotten away from me? 😕 - yes says confused face). I am going to pre-apologize because I am likely to use those emoji faces way to much now that I know they exist. For example, how could I have gotten along without this: 🏤 - European post office!. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a Central American Post office. But let's hope there are lots of 🐦and 🌮 and 🍺. Ok, I'll stop. Nope, one more🍹.
I think I was talking about my bag so long ago, pre-emoji awareness. These colourless black squiggles/letters seem so pointless now, but to finish up, my packed bag is just within the carry on limit for dimensions (9' x 14' x 22') and well below the weight limit of 50 lbs (my bag is a scant 25 lbs).
👂ear 👃 nose 🗻mt Fuji 📑page tab 🍘rice cake 🐩poodle. Please stop says 😧 anguished face. I CAN'T! Oh no, there are so many cat faces 🐱😾🙀. Definitely time for bed. I'll see if I can disable the emoji function in the morning, for all of our sakes. 🎏carp steamer just in case you need one.
But more worrisome than the airport is the flight from San Francisco to Houston. It is a red eye so game goers may very well be booked onto that plane. And, if United's reputation is anything to go on, that plane will probably be oversold. And who is going to get bumped, the girls who show up an hour before their flight using the cheapest tickets in the world.
So, first I tried to call Air Canada because I love a good 'how AC is awful' story for my blog. But all I got was a message that due to terrible weather and cancelled flights all over North America, the queue to talk to an agent is even longer than usual (who knew it was possible). So, I decided to go for the face to face. We bought our tickets through Flight Centre. There is a Flight Centre at the mall so I popped by on my way home form work.
Sarah was my agent de jour. I told my super bowl tale of woe. She had the decency to look aghast at our situation. Her advise, make sure we had seats reserved. All of our United flights allowed us to pre-book seats so we already had them so that is good. And we have to make sure we check in online 24 hours in advance. We can do that. She also noticed we didn't have seats booked on the Air Canada legs of our trip (Vancouver to San Francisco and return). They were going to charge us for seat selection. She called them up and got us seats. Clearly Sarah was my new hero so I decided to push my luck. I told her after scouring the tickets and the United website, I still couldn't actually say how much our bag allowance is. It took her a few minutes but she found it, one checked bag, one carry on bag, one personal bag. Yeah!. And she gave me the weights and dimensions.
We plan to only take carry on bags on the way down. I have been prepacking my new cubes all week and tonight I shoved them all in my backpack. They fit! With bits of room to spare, not much, but better than bursting at the seams. Plus, that is just the backpack, the zip-on day pack is empty. So, that gives room for random purchases (which of course, are highly unlikely - I need that sarcasm emoji, I'll make one up, here it is :}. Wait, I just discovered that blogger has emojis, 😏 They call this smirking face, but for the purposes of this blog, it is now sarcastic face. Has this parenthetic side discussion gotten away from me? 😕 - yes says confused face). I am going to pre-apologize because I am likely to use those emoji faces way to much now that I know they exist. For example, how could I have gotten along without this: 🏤 - European post office!. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a Central American Post office. But let's hope there are lots of 🐦and 🌮 and 🍺. Ok, I'll stop. Nope, one more🍹.
I think I was talking about my bag so long ago, pre-emoji awareness. These colourless black squiggles/letters seem so pointless now, but to finish up, my packed bag is just within the carry on limit for dimensions (9' x 14' x 22') and well below the weight limit of 50 lbs (my bag is a scant 25 lbs).
👂ear 👃 nose 🗻mt Fuji 📑page tab 🍘rice cake 🐩poodle. Please stop says 😧 anguished face. I CAN'T! Oh no, there are so many cat faces 🐱😾🙀. Definitely time for bed. I'll see if I can disable the emoji function in the morning, for all of our sakes. 🎏carp steamer just in case you need one.
