The big trip began <strong>early</strong>. We got up at 5AM, and were out the door from my parent’s house at 6AM. We drove to Watkins to meet Mary Jo’s parents. We got there a mere 30 minutes late. Super fog and a school bus slowed us down quite a bit.
From there we all carpooled into the cities. We stopped in Plymouth for some breakfast at Perkins. Well, <em>they</em> had breakfast. I had a salad. I know, weird, right? After we got done eating we hustled down to the airport. We got our bags checked in with United for the flight to Chicago. There was some question about how to get boarding passes for the second and third flights, since online check-in didn’t work.
We talked to the United person and found out that we would need to get boarding passes from the second airline (Scandinavian) for the second leg. That was fine by us. We said goodbye to the parents and went through security. That was painless… at least as painless and something like that can be. We waved goodbye and went to our gate.
We had one outstanding item that needed addressing: the cell phones. We needed to cancel service. Mary Jo called up AT&T and asked to cancel the account. The customer service rep put her on hold to cancel the service. The next thing we knew she had lost the call. She tried calling back, but it wouldn’t go through. I checked my phone and found the following message: Sim card not provisioned. The service rep had indeed canceled the service, immediately terminating the call with Mary Jo. That was a little surprising. We expected it to quit at the end of the day or something. Whatever we thought.
The flight to Chicago was fast and uneventful. It was about an hour and a half. Nothing very interesting about it.
We got in to Chicago and tried to find the Scandinavian desk. We managed to get out of the terminal we arrived in, found the tram, and got ourselves over to the correct ticketing desk. This is where we hit a problem. When we got to the desk the rep said she couldn’t check us in because there was a problem with the ticket. She asked us to call the travel service (in this case American Express Travel) and have them re-issue the ticket. Well, interesting. The obvious problem here was that our cell phones were off. OH NOES!!!!
Back in the old days, they had these things called “pay phones”. They are a wired phone attached to the wall in public places. Airports still have these. We went to one and called up the travel company. We sat on hold a bit, did some talking, and it ended up that the travel rep talked to someone with the airline that said the ticket was fine. OK… On the plus side, I made $2.25 on pay phone slots.
We went back to the desk and talked to a different rep. The problem was that we were booked for economy plus, but were only charged for economy. A paltry difference of $1400. Well, we were fine with economy, so we just got tickets for that. Within minutes we were set.
In our travels to the Scandinavian desk, we left the secure zone. This meant we had to go back through. There were three security lines and a business/first class line. I somehow got moved over to the business and first class line. Not sure why. It wasn’t even really “extra random screening”. So, I don’t know. We got through and headed to the gate.
The second leg of our travel would bring us from Chicago to Stockholm, Sweden. 8 hours. Oy. That’s the next post.
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