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Just chilling

I will write up my #FBI2011 post soon, but first I want to fill eveyone in on why I ended up spending 14 hours at CT airport trying to get home from the wonderful conference. The first thing to know, is that it was entirely my own fault. Well, at least, the first bit was. Thereafter I was a victim of circumstance!

The first thing you need to know is I am a slightly paranoid traveller. Not in the sense of “ohmigod the plane’s going to fall out of the sky and we’re all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!” but more along the lines of have I forgotten anything? Have I got my ID book/credit card/toothbrush/camera/phone charger. I usually check everything meticulously and (try to) control all that is in my control and the rest is up to fate. So; picture the scene. 5am. Dark. I’m standing among many other bleary-eyed travellers. I approach the check-in counter, lugging my 20.1kg suitcase stuffed full of FBI2011 goodies. I grin and present my ID book.

*tap tap tappity tap* The immaculate attendants nails click on the keyboard. “Mam, I can’t find your details. Are you sure you’re on this flight?” My tummy lurched slightly but I was sure I was so I grinned and asked her to check again. Gave her my reference number and eTicket number. Nothing. No problem I smile, I’ll just check with the ticketing counter. So I left my bag with her and went to the ticket counter. Gave my details to the lady. *tap tap tap. Tappity. Tappity. Tap. [this went on a while] tap tap tap tap tappity……….tap tap* More butterflies growing in my stomach now. And then; “Mam, those details were for a flight on January 21st.” Shit. Really? She prints out the info. Yup. There it is in white and dot-matrix-printer grey. Jan 21st. Bugger.

It appears that, in my spontaneous rush to book flights before I changed my mind after Tandy & Hila twisted my rubber arm; I accidentally booked my return flight for the wrong date. I booked it for January 21st , instead of the much more useful, February 21st.

Face.

Palm.

I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a stupid mistake. I had checked and rechecked the day but not the month. Blonde. Besides feeling really stupid, I also felt terrible for getting Hila’s wonderful hubby out of bed at 4am to take me to the airport! Anyway, nothing to be done about it now. I need to rebook my flight.

And here’s where it all started to go really wrong. To explain properly, I need to back up a little.

On Saturday, I hired a little car to drive myself to the airport in PE. By far the cheapest way of getting there. However, when I made the reservation; the lady who processed it accidentally charged my credit car with the wrong deposit. She realised her mistake immediately and put through the reversal-before putting through the correct amount. So I was charged twice on the same day for that hire. However, Europcar like to earn interest off other people’s money so they didn’t refund the amount immediately. So my credit card was feeling a little strain. My bank account was also pretty dire as it’s the end of the month and a week from payday still. So in a nutshell, I was effectively broke. I needed R1083 for the new ticket and I could rustle up R800. *le sigh*. I called my other half (waking him up) to see if he could make a plan, but as he’s a different bank to me, he couldn’t help. There was nothing for it. I called my Dad.

After assuring him I was fine I swallowed my pride and asked him to transfer me the shortfall. I have wonderful parents. Neither of them (because of course my Mum got in on the act as soon as she heard it was me on the phone) batted an eyelid at being woken at 5:30am and asked for money! Money obtained (aren’t EFT’s wonderful things?) I toddled off to rebook my ticket.

And here’s the second piece of bad luck. Apparently some Irish blokes had a bit of a concert in Cape Town on Friday. Apparently they’re also so popular (though with a name like U2…who knows) and so there were hoards of people all trying to leave the Fair Cape. So; the first seat I could get was for 6.30pm (time at this point was 0545..AM!). Crapcrapcrappitycrap. Anyway. I had a ticket and at that point that’s all I cared about. I went over and asked about standby flights; the attended looked sceptical. Turns out that there were a bunch of flights cancelled/diverted in the morning which of course, had huge knock on effects leaving hundreds of people stranded and a *lot* of flights overbooked. I hung around for a bit, hoping to get on the 9am flight, but no joy. So I went off to have breakfast at the Mugg&Bean before coming back to hang about for the 11am flight. Again a no go. After that I lay down on the floor to read my book and mags from the Goodie bag. Since I was up at 4am, I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew there was a Suisseport official leaning over and tapping me awake. She showed me to the Assisted Passengers room where Glory Be! there was a couch and a comfortable one at that! So that’s where I spent the rest of the day. Alternating between reading my book and my mags. Nibbling on the chocolates and nougat from the goodie bag. I ventured out at 1pm to see about that flight but due to the massive over-booking there was no luck. I was advised to get my boarding pass then so I couldn’t be bumped off the flight I was legitimately on.

I had some crappy KFC for lunch and even managed to have a nice nap for an hour and a half. The room was quiet, not well used and I felt perfectly safe dozing off! Around 5pm I checked my bag in and went through to the departure lounge. Grabbed a quick supper and then went to wait for the flight.

Which got delayed by 45min. That nearly did my head in!!

We finally took off at 19:30 and I was home and in bed by 10pm. I spent 14 hours in the actual terminal building. Thanks so much to everyone who was worried about me! It’s all good character building stuff!!