Holiday Travel

I posted a little about our travel mayhem on fb, but instead of doing massive and/or numerous posts, I thought this was perfect for a blog:  Enjoy…

To start with, let me be clear. We didn’t plan for a trip for this holiday season. We were going to stay at home and enjoy our first Christmas in Mexico. Obviously this was not meant to be. I have a strong suspicion that my mom has been praying, again. When that woman talks, God listens.

Our son needed help, that’s all it takes. For financial and logistical reasons my son needs to move in with my mom. We have told our children that if they need it we will help them move—the connotation being this is a limited offer. We were already planning on sending him to visit the family for the holiday (Merry Christmas—here’s a ticket) and I really thought it would just be plane fare, but the timing worked itself out, and it was time for him to move.

Bev, as usual, had the entire trip planned out. She and I would go to San Diego airport and fly together to Phoenix, from there she would catch a flight to Albuquerque where our son is, and I would fly to Dallas and from there take the bus to Abilene. (Bev doesn’t want me lifting moving boxes, something about not wanting to do hernia surgery again.) Those were great plans.

So, on the way to the airport we get a text telling us that our flight had been canceled. (Isn’t modern technology wonderful?) We went to the ticked counter at the airport and the friendly and helpful clerk and the ticket counter put us on two different flights. I would leave in an hour and get to Dallas through Sacramento, Bev would leave in just less than three hours and fly straight through to Albuquerque. Problem averted, everything will be smooth for the rest of the trip.

Yeah, right.

When I got to Sacramento I found that my connecting flight had been delayed. It was only half an hour. It was early for dinner, but I hadn’t really had lunch and I would have time to eat if I wanted. There was a pizza place in the airport.

I got on my flight. By the way, it seems if the airline has to reroute you, you lose out on the boarding order. Going in we had the boarding number of A-17, but now my number was C-20. If you’ve ever flown Southwest, you know what I mean.

I was tempted to get on the plane saying, “I hope there’s a few middle seats left.”

On the good side, I sat next to a nice woman who is from the Dallas area. We talked about family, what I do as a missionary, etc. On the bad side, the pizza I’d eaten kept threatening to come back, and not in a good way. It was uncomfortable. My stomach is still kind of upset.

I arrived in Dallas later than planned. Instead of having three hours to get to the bus station I had one, and they had suggested being there about an hour early to check in. The bus was supposed to leave at 11:00 pm.  As an interesting aside, there are actually two bus stations on my itinerary. I was going to the one relatively near the airport to take a bus to the downtown station where I would catch the bus to Abilene. As travel goes, it’s not all that complicated.

I found a taxi, he looked up the bus station on Google maps and away we went. He was a friendly young man. He was from Ethiopia and had been in the states for eight years. I guess working a taxi at the airport wasn’t that good of a job. I was his first fare in three hours.

Everything was fine until… we arrived at the station with fifteen minutes to spare but the driver dropped me off way back from the station because there was a police car in the parking lot and he didn’t want to get in trouble. I’m pretty sure that dropping someone off at the bus station isn’t against the law, so I don’t know what was really going on.

Anyway, I gathered by baggage and wandered into the station.

Evidently there are two “bus stations” on the same street in Dallas. The greyhound station and the city bus station.

I was at the wrong bus station, somewhere in Dallas, at 11:00 at night, with a tummy ache.

But, there were bus drivers around, they usually know a lot about getting from point A to point B, and they can be quite helpful, so I asked.

I was even given choices. I could take bus 343 which would take me near where the other bus station was, it had just left, but there would be another one along in a few minutes, or I could take the shuttle to downtown where the other station was. (I, obviously, didn’t even know what the station was supposed to look like.)

My prayer at the point was, “God I can’t handle this. I don’t know what to do.”

After waiting for a few minutes in an almost empty bus station I remembered that I’d put the Uber app on my phone before we left, thinking it might be a good alternative to taking a taxi from the airport.

So I found on the map where the greyhound station was, three miles away, and called for a car.

So the driver showed up, found me,and I explained where I needed to go. I know I’d missed the bus, but I had paid for a ticket and I had hopes that they could transfer me to a later bus. I kind of figured on staying the night at the nearest hotel and maybe getting out in the morning, hopefully without paying for a new ticket.

However, the Uber driver took me to the downtown station. I think I only got charged for the three mile trip. Kudos to you Kevin. You are a godsend.

I arrived half an hour early for that bus, and aside from a small difficulty with the tag on my suitcase—at that point hardly worth mentioning– there were no problems. I arrived in Abilene at 4 in the morning as scheduled.

Maybe I should have started out with “God I can’t handle this.”

–May your holiday travel be less adventurous than mine.