Travel Karma
If you travel a lot, then you know what I mean when I talk about travel karma. I’ve long since given up yelling at airport counter employees—the last “episode” of extreme travel rage for me was in Miami in 2005—but stuff still happens, good and bad, for reasons that remain unclear.
Our trip to New York last week seemed absolutely blessed. We were sitting in the Sacramento airport, having a bite to eat, and Andrew got a free beer from the waiter because he’d delivered the wrong kind. Then, after Andrew struck up a friendly conversation with the gate agent for our flight, she gave us free upgrades to Business Class, just because she thought we (well, probably Andrew, in all his garrulousness) were so nice.
After good travel luck like that, it was somehow not surprising that our return trip was a disaster. We were stuck on the runway for over an hour at JFK, unable to take off because of air traffic control problems. When we arrived in San Francisco, we had, as we’d feared, missed our connection to Sacramento—and were ineligible for a hotel room since it was air-traffic-control-related, not the airline’s fault. We’d missed the flight by five minutes. Exhausted at that point, but unwilling to go to a hotel for a few hours to catch a 7:15am flight the next day, we rented a car and drove home at 2:00am. When Andrew called to cancel our places on the next day’s flight, we were reimbursed $36 and $54 each.
I don't know what we did to deserve such bad travel karma this time around.
Our trip to New York last week seemed absolutely blessed. We were sitting in the Sacramento airport, having a bite to eat, and Andrew got a free beer from the waiter because he’d delivered the wrong kind. Then, after Andrew struck up a friendly conversation with the gate agent for our flight, she gave us free upgrades to Business Class, just because she thought we (well, probably Andrew, in all his garrulousness) were so nice.
After good travel luck like that, it was somehow not surprising that our return trip was a disaster. We were stuck on the runway for over an hour at JFK, unable to take off because of air traffic control problems. When we arrived in San Francisco, we had, as we’d feared, missed our connection to Sacramento—and were ineligible for a hotel room since it was air-traffic-control-related, not the airline’s fault. We’d missed the flight by five minutes. Exhausted at that point, but unwilling to go to a hotel for a few hours to catch a 7:15am flight the next day, we rented a car and drove home at 2:00am. When Andrew called to cancel our places on the next day’s flight, we were reimbursed $36 and $54 each.
I don't know what we did to deserve such bad travel karma this time around.
Comments
I bet that you wouldn't leave NY for Sactown.