Wake Up Early. Wait All Day.

[I wrote this on Monday, October 10th, which was really Sunday, the 9th, for everyone else in the US. Whatever. This describes the first day or so of our trip.]


Let’s start with the punch line: we are in Beijing! Now, let’s back up. We were supposed to fly from Seattle to San Francisco around 7:20am to get our flight to Beijing, which left SF around 11:00am. I say “supposed to” because I got a text – not even a phone call, mind you – saying our flight from Seattle to San Francisco was canceled when we woke up at 5am. Thanks, United!

So I immediately got on the phone with the airline reservations while we scurried around to get ready for the car that was coming to get us at 5:30. We figured that we should just go to the airport because, surely, there had to be a flight that could get us to San Francisco before 11am.

I was told by the first human being on the phone at United that I was able to speak with that, no, there were no more flights that would get us there for our Beijing trip. However, they had rebooked us through Chicago on a flight the next day that would arrive in Beijing at 3pm on Monday. Since my talk at the conference is at 11am on Monday, this was not a good option. When the representative put me on hold to “look again,” my call somehow got dropped. Thanks AT&T/iPhone!

By now, we were in the car on the way to the airport and I was on the phone with a second agent, going through everything from scratch. Soon we were in the airport with everyone else from the canceled flight, and United staff looking like they’d rather be anywhere else than in front of a semi-irate mob.

After the second agent on the phone told me (again) that there was nothing, I unconsciously tried a new tactic: I didn’t say that was OK. Instead, I just reiterated we needed to get to Beijing before Monday. Silence had some effect because, magically, she said there might be a direct flight on Delta from Seattle to Beijing leave that night. And maybe she could get us on it.

Well, we got on the direct evening flight. We went back home and actually had a nice day in Seattle, got to see the twins a little, and then headed back to the airport late afternoon. Other than having a gaggle of high school kids in front of us, the flight was fine. We both slept a little, got to the hotel and slept a little more (as I said), and we ready to start our first full day in China.