Revacation Part 1

2010/03/26

I went on a Revacation recently. I left from Pittsburgh airport on 2010/03/26 to go to Buenos Aires. It was probably going to be the trip of my lifetime. I never went anywhere that far away or that exotic. This is what happened in sort of timeline of events kind of way.

"What is a Revacation anyway?", you might ask. This is a vacation that you've already planned out and actually left to go on but before you make it events beyond your control end it early and it's like it never happened. When you replan it and successfully make it to that 'rescheduled vacation' then that is what I am referring to as a revacation. It makes it a little more special to call it that.

As you may have guessed I did leave to try this vacation once already. In February, in the heart of the worst snow storm we have ever had in Pittsburgh, I got on a plane to connect in Atlanta to get out of this. Unfortunately in Atlanta it only snows once every 10 years or so and 3 inches of snow was enough to shut the whole airport down. I was stuck there and after 4 hours on the phone the only choice was to wait until Wednesday to continue to Buenos Aires or go home to Pittsburgh at 1:30pm tomorrow. I didn't want to cancel after going this far but the thought of spending 5 days in the airport was even less appealing. It killed me to do but I had to call it off in hopes of trying again later. Alejandra didn't really like this decision either but what other choice did we have? To complete my 24 hours stuck in the Atlanta airport then 1:30pm flight back to Pittsburgh was delayed several times, we boarded and re-boarded and didn't actually leave until 6:00pm. Not a pleasant experience. I decided due to this I would not fly to Atlanta airport again unless absolutely necessary nor would I book another flight with Delta for the way they handled the situation.

So I came back went back to work on Monday and worked to reschedule. The other possible week we were thinking about originally came to be the revacation 03/26 thru 04/02. I did what I needed to do until that date came. This time we were using United and I was going to DC and I was positively hoping that there would be no issues this time.

I left work around 2:30pm on this Friday. I wanted to get thru Pittsburgh before I got caught in Friday rush hour traffic. I decided that after a bad experience with FastTrack airport parking

[mini rant] I loved the service, I loved the shuttle, the parking area seemed fine, everything seemed great until my vacation was cut short. I paid to park my car for 8 days but since I came back I only used 2. It took over 5 weeks and I don't even know how many phone calls to get my balance refunded. They don't like giving refunds apparently. I won't dissuade anyone from trying this service but after that experience, I don't think I will use them again. [/mini rant]

Like I said because of this bad experience I would just park at the airport instead. It took forever to find a space. I was in 16D which is pretty dang far from anywhere. When I got my stuff out of the car I seriously wasn't even sure which way the airport was. I couldn't see it. I started walking though and I found it. I was pretty far out though and even after I made it to the terminal with those moving walkways, my arms were still sore from hauling all my luggage with me. I checked my bag and even though the security lines were long I made it through with no trouble. I had some time to kill so I got a burger and a beer at TGIFridays. I met a crazy character there. This guy had to be on some kind of drugs. The lady sitting on the other side of him and I kept giving each other look when he'd say something that was crazy. He was cool though. It's better to meet people like that then regular boring fools. About another hour later I was on my plane to DC.

DC airport is like one long huge corridor. I had time but I still hurried to my gate when I got there. Since it is an international airport I saw many strange foreign people. That was a pretty neat experience for me. I made it to my gate, got on chat for a few minutes with Ale before we boarded. This plane was huge. I've never been on anything like this before. The 1st class passengers didn't even have seats, they had their own booths. Impressive. Every seat had a screen on the back of the seat too. You could either watch movies or the feature I liked the best was a GPS for the plane. It showed our route as a dotted line on the map and gave constant updates as far how how far away we were, how long it would take, how fast we were going and how high we were. I liked just watching that the best. I had dinner on the plane which I've never done before either and I was awake for a while with excitement before it all caught up with me and I fell asleep. I was off for an overnight trip to another continent!

TO BE CONTINUED