Not to hate on them or anything - I'm sure they didn't meant to cause me so much grief. But, for real. SO MUCH GRIEF.
To start, I arrived at the airport in Regina to catch my flight to Denver, which connected to John Wayne airport in orange County, CA. However, upon arriving (within the allotted time for an international flight), I was informed that the flight was overbooked by 1 person and unless someone cancelled or didn't show up for the flight, I was to be the one who was put on a different plane. First off, lets be clear that I was not the last to check in, but I was the last to check in without a pre-assigned seat. Silly, I know.
After a lot of aggravation and continual reminders that I HAD to be there on Friday evening, not Saturday they told me to go through security anyways and check my bags and all that jazz. (Bags were free because of the inconvenience, which is nice because they should have cost me about 100$ to ship based on their size and weight) Finally, after waiting for an hour they started boarding the plane, gave me a seat number, and let me on. Now, this wasn't really a big deal, but it was just stressful. Not only because I was expected to be there for Sea to Sea and I didn't want to mess with my travel plans, miss orientation, or anything like that, but also because my American, Kellan, had flown home to L.A. for the weekend to see me. Given that we hadn't seen each other in 2 years, this was a big deal and I wasn't going to disappoint.
Well, after arriving in Denver I went through customs, got my bike and oversized hockey bag and made my way to recheck the luggage. No one was at the oversized bagging area, so some nice gentleman who worked there checked my hockey bag as a regular one (NO CHARGE. AWESOME). however, no one was taking care of my bike box. Finally, someone came over, checked over the bag, and said it was fine and I could go through security. This seemed fishy to me since they hadn't sent the bag through, so I doubled checked that I could leave, and given both his adamant answer that unless the box contained a gun, as well as the MASSIVE line through security, I reluctantly went.
On the flight from Denver to L.A. I was pleasantly upgraded to a better seat - maybe because of the problem in Regina with overbooking? Who knows. But it was glorious.
View from the Plane taking off from Denver
Arriving in L.A. I quickly spotted one of my fellow Sea to Sea-ers, Sara Bakelaar from Ontario. Although we had never met before, Sara was genius and added some people on facebook prior to the trip. It was so nice ot see a friendly face with a huge bike box. however, it was less nice when my own bike box didn't show up! After waiting for about 30 minutes with kellan for the box to arrive, we decided to talk to the United Bagging Claim. I was shocked to find that they thought it was still in Regina, Canada! having physically hauled that thing through the Denver airport, I knew better. BUT apparently no one scanned it when it reached Denver and hence, it was lost. And so began the terror of my lost bike.
Since this is such a long story, I'm going to break it up and leave you all on a cliffhanger here. You'll have to wait and see what happens. In other words, wait until I have time to blog again :) (Probably tomorrow).
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