MUPGT & DI - Doing The Travel Tango Again

Truly the relationship between the Magical Unicorn Pony God and Travel and yours truly is transitioning in its own right to a more mature and respectful relationship between adversaries.

Wife and I are currently in Maine (for the single and sole purpose of eating lobster) before we head down to the North Carolina Outer Banks to be washed out to sea by a dreadful hurricane...NO...I mean to meet up with my brother and his clan...the washed out to sea by hurricane will just be an unexpected amenity that we hadn't anticipated or even had to pay for!

On Wednesday we headed out to the airport in Albuquerque. I was feeling pretty good. We'd already gotten upgraded on our leg from Chicago to Portland Maine. My Uber ride was going to cost me all of $18, less than half the cost of a van or taxi. All was good with the travel world...until I checked my United app and saw that our flight to Chicago was delayed. The estimated delay was going to leave me only 30 minutes to get to my flight. And the gate we were to arrive at was about as far apart as one could get from the one we needed to depart from.

As we sat and ate our sandwiches, I saw the time on the delay increasing. I told Wife, "I'm going to start putting in place what we need if the flight is delayed." I then:

• Called United and got a standby seat on a flight early the next morning
• Emailed my Airbnb host in Maine and told her I might likely not arrive tonight. She told me not to worry there would be no charge if we arrived the next day
• Went to my Hilton app and found there were three hotels at the airport I could book a room at and not go bankrupt. 
• Got my Hertz phone number ready if I had to delay the rental car

Now it was out of my hands. The plane took forever to board. By the time we took off they were estimating that our getting to the gate would be only 10 minutes before my connecting flight pushed back. That's essentially missing your flight as they shut the doors 10 minutes before departure.

As we landed at O'Hare, I was pretty much resigned that we were done as far as getting out that night. The flight attendants started to announce the gates for the connections as at least 70% of the fight had close connections. She didn't mention ours until the end. We were told our plane was actually running 10 minutes late and that the gate was just two from where we would now be arriving. There might actually be a chance of our making it!

As we pulled into to the gate, the gate attendant announced, "Passengers on the flight to Portland, your plane is at gate C25 just next to this." It was the only announcement like that made. We and three other passengers made our way where they were holding the plane for us. There was even room for overhead for our bag. And when we pushed back from the gate the captain said they just had to wait a bit for the bags of the last connecting passengers...us!

We arrived at Portland. Our bags were off first. We were first in line at the rental car company. We arrived earlier to our Airbnb than we expected.

Good match MUPGT.