LAX

I suppose the place to start talking about my vacation is at the beginning. It didn’t go well. We arrived at the Salt Lake City airport in plenty of time. Unluckily, we made the mistake of using Delta’s Priority check in. We’d have been better off with the machines.

The clerk at the Delta desk kept saying our itinerary didn’t make sense – that we were scheduled to leave too soon after arrival and there were problems with the dates. Hello! International date line anyone?

We kept saying not to change anything and just check us through. He announced he would “fix” it for us.

Bad sign. When we arrived in LAX with a couple hours layover we made straight for the international gate, as per the airport personnel’s instructions. There we received the bad news. Somehow our reservations were all cancelled. Someone had tried to switch us from EVA Air to China Air and failed. We were stranded in LA.

Keep in mind, this is around midnight.

EVA Air could not restore out seats. They had already re-sold them to other people. They didn’t even give us much hope for stand by. We went to China Air to see if they could help. What a long line! While we waited, we called the travel company and explained what happened. They got us tickets on All Nippon for the next morning. Great! But they didn’t get us a motel room.

Thus began a loooong shaggy dog story about hunting for a place to stay. I will reduce it to a few salient points.

1) if it’s after midnight, you can’t reserve a room over the internet for that night. They won’t even tell you if rooms are available.

2) Delta service wasted about three hours of our time and provided nothing more than a voucher no one in town would honor.

3) The combination of Special Olympics and some random conventions is enough to wipe out every room available within a twenty mile radius of the airport.

4) If you want to try sleeping in a rental van because there are no rooms to be had, you have to rent it before the agencies all close. By 3 am they are all closed.

5) You can’t get into the terminals late at night because they close.

6) The floors of the part of the terminal where you check your bags are very hard and very cold, but they won’t run you off if you get stranded.

7) The seats there all have arm rests that seem specifically designed to keep people from sleeping. You certainly can’t stretch out anywhere comfortably.

8) All Nippon is wonderful. They made up for a rough night.

We arrived in Jakarta several hours behind schedule, but didn’t miss too much. I’ve never been happier to land in a hotel bed.