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@LaT - I'm going to look into that. Seriously, I'm to the point I need to do something, or at this rate, I won't be flying much any more, which is unacceptable.
I spent a lot of time thinking about it on the long flight back, and I never used to be this way. I think for a lot of people, that changed with the increased security after 9-11, but that never bothered me.
As ridiculous as it sounds, we had an absolutely brutal return flight(s) from Budapest in 2010, I can't remember how long, but it ended up being something like 45 hours from start to finish, and the majority of the issues was breakdowns in process, followed by officious pricks at every step, and I'm starting to think I've got some kind of damn low-level PTSD from that whole experience, because the parts that freak me out are either weirdo breakdowns or dealing with airline/govt employees who do not listen or show any kind of empathy when things go wrong, and they just make it worse.
@Ali - I was the same way when I rode public transportation. I fingered by 30-Day bus pas constantly, I'm sure folks thought I was some kind of OCD weirdo.
I'm also like that with my phone. These days, lose your phone, you lose half your life, and it's expensive. I know there are a lot of studies done about phone behaviors, but they should do one about phone anxiety based on losing a thousand dollar piece of equipment that has all your shit on it.
Anyway...
Getting home was a bear. Getting to NY was fine, but then we sat on the taxiway for an hour, with the pilot occasionally playing pessimist with announcements like, "We're in the queue to take off, but if we're not up in 6-8 minutes, we're going to be delayed a long time. A long, long time." Then 10 minutes went by and he'd pop on and say something in a similar vein.
We finally took off and landed in Cincy, landing about 9:30PM. Here's where the fun began.
Since we live over an hour from the airport, we decided before we left to treat ourselves and book a room at the hotel that's attached to the airport. Airport is on one side of the garage, hotel is opposite. Grab your bags, up and outside, walk across the parking lot (more or less) and you're at the hotel.
Got our bags, walked out, and they're doing construction all around the garage. It's a "you can't get there from here" situation. Plus, it was raining, and after 10PM, so we decided to grab the hotel shuttle.
Waited...waited...waited...no shuttle. Called the hotel. Rang...rang...rang...no answer.
Finally, I said, "Look, let's get the car from off-site parking, then we'll just drive back to the hotel."
Got on the shuttle, but even with our little slip of paper showing where we parked, the driver couldn't find it, and being dark and rainy, we couldn't see anything. I finally had him drop the wife and the bags at a shelter, and I walked around four rows of cars until I found it.
Back at the hotel, we parked and went in and, being charitable, it was a bit worse for wear. The gentleman checking people in was very nice, but verrrrry slow at it.
Finally got our room, went back to it, opened the door, instantly greeted with wet musty basement smell, but figured it was late and just one night, so ok.
Closed the door...and the door wouldn't lock. Nope, not gonna work.
Wife went down to report that, and came back with "They're sending maintenance." At 11:15PM.
I went back down and nicely asked the gentleman if he would put us in another room, being that we'd been up about 30 hours and it was going on 11:30PM. We didn't want to wait for maintenance.
He was helping another couple, and in that time, the maintenance guy showed up, declared the door inoperative, and reported it back to the desk.
He offered us a smaller room, at the same price, at which point I decided I'd rather just drive the 75 minutes home, so he promised to cancel our reservation, and give us some reward points.
Finally got home at about 1AM, put some things away, then went to bed. Woke up this morning to a notice from the hotel company that we're being charged for the room due to being a no-show, so now we have that to clear up.
Also, it's a holiday today, so we can't collect the dog until to tomorrow, and when we got back to the US and on our regular phone plan, there was a voicemail from the kennel for the day after we left, saying there was a problem, she wouldn't take her meds, she bit a vet worker, and now we're going crazy because we can't get ahold of them because of the holiday.
Besides the obvious issue at hand, I both stated and wrote down in our instructions that we were out of the country and unreachable by phone. They have our email, the wife's FB Messenger ID, and they could have texted. I told them at least six times in five minutes, "If something happens, you can't call." Fat lotta good that did.
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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown
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