A Detour

I had initially believed I would be writing the remaining entries of our Iberian vacation at home- yes, I failed in keeping up a somewhat daily rambling of the trip, but late nights and even later mornings conspired to keep me away from posting. But, I am in fact not at home. . .rather, I am sitting in the American Airlines terminal in Los Angeles at roughly 1 AM Saturday, April 19, a mere 29 hours after we woke up in Lisbon to head to the airport. We carefully laid out our plans for our baggage, since we were bringing home a fair amount of wine, how best to ensure that nothing broke. We purchased wine shipping boxes in Porto (that's another entry), we bought tape, we wrapped up bottles in sweaters and shirts in the luggage. We got to the Lisbon airport with plenty of time, the British Airways lady covered the boxes in "Fragile" stickers and we were told to first take the bags to "Oversize luggage" and that we would receive our bags in LAX at the Oversize baggage door. Awesome. Bags are off.

Fly to Heathrow, no problems, other than walking 10 miles- picked up some Cadbury chocolate, looked around the british stores in Heathrow, hoped for curry house, but no luck, instead, settled for an Irish pub. Head off to our gate, no problems, plane is just over half full, so Meg and I take over 3 middle seats (the seating went 2-5-2), stretch out, read a bit, and just wait for the 10+ hour flight to LAX to end.

Land at LAX, work our way through passport control (after another 5 miles), then wait for our luggage. Now, we get the bags, as expected, and we are standing near the Oversize baggage door, but no boxes. . .all of sudden, tumbling down, end-over-end is one of boxes and it slams into the bottom of the carousel. We see an inky colored box coming towards us, a sure indicator that there's at least one broken bottle in there now; and there is. We take the box off the carousel, and it begins to pour out its delicious contents, meticulously packed only 13 hours earlier and bought we get hopes and expectations of a future decanting. The second box comes down, much the same as the first, but no release of its treasure. So, we stand there, unsure what to do because the boxes were not supposed to come out via the carousel, and we are looking for someone to explain. We eventually end up with a superior who gets our info and agrees, Yes, American Airlines messed up and we are at fault for the delivery and breaking of the bottles. However, since we hadn't passed through customs yet, there was nothing that could be done about extricating the broken bottles from the boxes until after customs, afterwards, head to the American baggage service center and they should be able to help. No problem.

We hit customs, sends us around for what we think will be the place to go over our purchases; instead, stamps our declaration and says "Exit to your right." That's it? That's what we had planned for? OK, so we exit and next stop is the re-check baggage section, and we skip past it since we were told to the American baggage service center to fix the leak, the guy agrees, and directs to the American baggage center for domestic flights.

Well, guess what. The domestic baggage service center says, tough luck, American is not responsible for broken glass or broken liquor bottles and the woman in the international baggage center is wrong, and that includes how the bag was delivered. In other words, the superior in the domestic center agreed that they delivered the boxes wrongly, but because they were glass, American is not at fault. Anyway, after a few minutes of telling the woman how she could be helpful (another box? we don't have boxes how about some tape? we don't have tape, but we can offer you a plastic bag so it doesn't dribble everywhere. Great, that doesn't solve the immediate problem of getting the unbroken bottles out and seeing which bottles broke. But, we are now very late for our connection back home.

We hurry over to the Alaska Airlines check-in, and, thankfully, there were 5 other people just in from London all trying to get on the same flight, so they held the flight for a few minutes to accommodate those passengers. Unfortunately for us, they were unable to find a box or a solution in time for the flagging and soggy wine box, whereupon, a decision was made: Meg would take the flight with all the bags, except for the boxes, which I will stay with and hope another solution would present itself. Alaska takes the luggage and does a quick security check to make sure it makes the flight. I linger, trying to find a new way to get home, and one of the helpful Alaska employees finds a large box for the wine. With the new box, I head back to American to re-do my flights.

I walk up to the American counter at about 8:40, and notice there's a 9:05 flight to SFO. I recount the story for our boxes, the fights and delays with American which is the reason I'm in front of the counter in the first place, and the he just says, sorry, flight is already closed for check-in bags. Here I just came from Alaska, which held the plane to ensure more passengers got on and made a great effort to get those bags on the plane, all within 10 minutes or so, and here's American, baldly saying, sorry, rules are rules, no matter how sob the story. So, no flight home tonight for me, rather, tomorrow morning it is. I'm offered a discount voucher for a local hotel which I decline- why should I have to pay for a hotel when I missed my connection trying to fix a problem created by American.

A funny: Afterwards, I sit outside and enjoy the cool L.A. night, and I keep getting text messages from Meg. Her flight should have taken off by now, so why am I still getting messages. I begin to wander back over to Alaska, thinking, hmmm, maybe there's some sort of delay or plane issue, and I might be able to make it after all- alas, it was just traffic, and the plane leaves the gate as I approach the Alaska terminal.

So, here I am at 1:20 AM, Saturday morning, trying to make it home from our 10 day vacation in Spain and Portugal. . .I had certainly anticipated some issues with flights, since Meg and I always run into something, but had not expected this. Check-in opens at 4:00 AM, so I'll wait to do that, then head up to the gate and hope to get on an early flight to SFO. If I don't, then I won't get in to SFO until noon, nearly 36 hours after we left Lisbon.

I suppose there's always gotta be a story about the getting there and/or getting home.