I Miss You Too MUPGT

Everything packed. Uber ordered and on time. Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel onboard. Check.

Wait. You are a new reader? You don't know who the Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel is? Let me educate you. 

We are all aware of the major deities - Sun God, War God, God of Love, etc. But there are a host of minor deities that govern multitudes of daily life. I was introduced to the Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel (MUPGT for short) by daughter #3 about the time I started writing this blog 16 years ago. As a veteran road warrior, I had always felt there were some powers at work trying to disrupt your smooth flow of travel. It didn't make sense that the disruptive situations one ran into would be just random. There HAD TO BE some deeper more malevolent force at work. 

Once I recognized and acknowledged this minor, pain-in-the-ass dealing deity, I truly became the road warrior. Disruptions were not to be passively accepted. It was de-I, road warrior sworn foe to the MUPGT, her nemesis, and she was mine. Oh, the incredible battles we had. She would throw up natural events, mechanical events, people events. I would fight back with my knowledge of the air transportation system, rebooking, running on standby, pulling my luggage off of planes at the last moment to avoid them being sent to Uzbekistan when your plane was rerouted. 

When I transitioned into semi-retirement mostly traveling for fun, the intensity of the battle dropped off. For many years, travel was pretty tranquil. We were like old adversaries now reminiscing about old times. But the Covid world changes to air travel have made it too tempting for MUPGT and she has reentered the lists big time.

Recently my battles with her have been through the mechanism of airline schedule changes. This is what happened on our return from Sicily. It is very clever of the horned travel tormentor to just screw up scheduling in order to wreak havoc. But she is not against the direct battle either.

Just as we are ready to go out the door in our Uber, the text message comes in. Your first flight will be 35 minutes late. We only have 70 minutes between flights. That will be cutting it way close. The road warrior knows you never wait to see how it will unfold. You don't try to make the change at the airport. You call (not get online, you call) your airlines customer service number as soon as possible and see what options you have. If you are have been wise to get status on an airline, that will give you a leg up. 

I am trying to do this as we are manhandling the bags into the Uber. Of course the first call gets disconnected. We also find there is a huge back-up on the highway to the airport. But veterans as we are, that hardly fazes us as we exit and take one of the alternative routes. I call again. I get some one who is clearly inexperienced. They tell me there aren't any options. Now we are at the airport. The check-in desk, as expected is not much help. 

We get through security and buy some lunch. Then the next automated update (one can hear the crude unicorn disrupter e-snickering as the text comes in). Our flight is further delayed. Now we absolutely cannot make our connection. In many ways this is good as far as rebooking because in the airline's eyes now something has to be done. 

On the phone again. Score. An experience rep based her in the U.S. who knows the system. We come up with two options. One is would allow us to keep going as we are now but is really dreadful in terms of additional flights, layover lengths, total amount of travel, and wretched arrival time. The other is to just go home, start over tomorrow with the only change in itinerary leaving earlier so if there is a problem from here to our first stop, we have plenty of time. We took that one.

We then had to figure out how to get our bags that had been checked back. That took a good while talking to three different airline people. I closed off the battle day spending an hour and forty five minutes on hold with All Nippon Airlines so I could get new seat assignments only to find you can't do it the day before the flight. It's done at the gate.

Well enough travel battles for today. I am taking a nap and relaxing until we pickup the sword tomorrow.