(Mis)adventures with Kathy

I love to travel!  I think I rank travel as one of my top 4 or 5 things to do.  Travel, reading, sailing, riding, jigsaw puzzling while binge watching Netflix…all is good. (Okay, dating is up there too but I am not terribly delighted with the options on dating sites, which has been a topic for other blog posts).

I have been enjoying racking up mileage points in recent years once COVID calmed down and allowed us to go play again.

My latest adventure was going to Maine and Canada this past month.  Why there?  First, I grew up reading and loving the “Anne of Green Gables” series written by L.M. Montgomery and promised myself someday I would wander the paths that the author walked and see why she was inspired to write such delightful, poignant books.  Second, my cousin and her husband have a summer camp in northern Maine, so it was time to cross another state and province off my list and tackle both locations with gusto.

Alas, travel challenges got in my way.   Travel isn’t as much fun as it used to be.  I LOVE planning trips and working out the itinerary and finding little places to stay and searching out fun excursions.  But sometimes the stars don’t align with one’s plans and God chuckles as you wrestle with the challenges.

Here are some of the misadventures I got to deal with:

I book flights early – usually months in advance.  I want good seats and good connections.  In May, via United (and Air Canada), I booked flights to Charlottetown, PEI, getting a rental car, then planning to leisurely explore PEI and Maine and flying home from Portland, Maine.   I booked VRBO’s, a charming little inn, and confirmed when I was going to crash with my cousin and her family. 

Then, I learned that one can’t book a rental car in Charlottetown and take it off the island.  Limited inventory?  Don’t like letting cars into the States?  Not sure, but I was stuck.  My trip was to be a driving adventure and a car comes in handy.  Hmmm…I put on my travel agent hat and decided I could get a car in Charlottetown, enjoy it, then fly to Montreal and get a car there and continue my trip to Maine.  (I had asked my cousins, who have planes, if they could pick me up in PEI and then chauffeur me to Bangor so I could get a car there and continue south.  They were willing but…Canada apparently has different rules about transponders, so they are no longer able to land their plane in Canada.  Good idea but not feasible.  I didn’t have it in my budget to play them $10K for a new transponder.)

So, I got the flights, got the rooms, got the car.  Then Air Canada went on strike the week before my trip.  Geez. I happened to hear that from my Altar Guild team member who casually mentioned that if I’m on Air Canada I might be screwed.    I went back to United and rebooked my flights to fly to Bangor, get the car there and drive to PEI and start my trip.  Sounds good, yes?

Yes, until I missed my connection in Chicago.  My “on time” flight leaving LAX suddenly sat on the tarmac for 40 minutes.  My connection was a tight 40 minutes but the only option I had to get to Bangor.   One thing I learned is that when you are trapped on an airplane and do have access to the flight status but not WiFi because United’s WiFi decided to stop working while you are trying to rebook all of your plans for that night and the next day, it’s discouraging to see that you are going to miss your connection and can’t do anything about it.  

Raise your hand if you have been at O’Hare.  I have a few times, and it is sometimes an easy connection.  Not this time.  I ran through three terminals (did I mention I was recovering from my fall off a horse and in buckets of pain? But I am determined to make this connection!)   I got to the new gate to see the doors were closed and the chalks were being removed from the plane as it is about to taxi away from the gate.  Pressing my face against the window and silently weeping was not my finest moment.  Actually, I didn’t do that, but I was very annoyed.  The airline knew we landed, knew four of us were on that flight and they couldn’t stick around 5 more minutes.   No more flights to Bangor, Maine that night.  I was stuck.  Not a fan of United anymore.  I really never was a fan of United.  I had a bad experience with United years ago.  That is a whole other story.

Here is what is hysterical – I was trying to figure out getting out of Chicago – the gate agent booked me on a flight leaving out right away to Portland ME.  I can do that.  And pick up my bag in Bangor the next day.  HA!   The gate agent said he would call the gate agent at the new gate as I ran there.  Well, I am not getting on that flight.  Doors closed as I got there, and I was chuckling as I listened to the phone ring from gate agent one to gate agent two (gate agent two was on the plane with the manifest and not at the desk answering any phones) and I realized I am not getting to Maine tonight.  At least that kind gate agent tried hard to get me on the flight.

So, plan B.  A fellow traveler on the same flight and I hung out together as we figured out the next steps.  He told me to get a room voucher from United.  I did and it worked!    I got my luggage and spent that evening recreating my trip.   Kudos to United for giving me a nice suite at a local hotel.  What was challenging is that I needed to get to my B and B the next day.  Fortunately, the staff at the B and B were kind and ready to greet me when I showed up.  Quite late.

One other frustrating thing about last minute challenges. When you plan ahead, you get the best seats. When you are suddenly scrambling for seats on a flight you weren’t expecting to take you are either sitting in the middle seat in coach or you are springing for first class because you really don’t need to be stuck in the middle seat when you booked the flight five months earlier. Yep, I sprung for first class. I am old and in pain. First class is just fine versus crammed for several hours in a middle seat.

I finally got to Bangor, Maine late the next afternoon and then drove 6 hours up to Charlottetown.  Almost got T-boned by a guy who tried to plow into my car.  At least I didn’t run into a moose. I always wanted to meet a moose but decided driving to PEI…(oh it was pouring rain by then!) that meeting a moose was no longer a priority.  I never did see a moose. 

I will say that once I got to Canada my trip was amazing!  Stay tuned for my upcoming shares about a wonderful trip.