The Blogs
Apparently I didn't blog the final days. I'm not sure why. A few things that I failed to mention...
• Sitting in the pouring rain, during a lightning storm watching the fireworks for the 4th of July.
• The fact that my bag went missing on the way home.
On the way to Arizona, I was told I'd have to re-check my bag at LAX. Which was fine, I did that (after finding it). I asked, at Phoenix on the way home if I'd need to re-check my bag at any point, I was told that I would have to, at LAX.
So upon arriving at LAX, I made my way to the baggage claim and waited around for my bag. People queued up, the bags started to arrive, the people left with their bags, until there was none of either left. Worried, I made my way over to the help desk. When I got served, the woman asked to see my ticket.
"You're bag has been checked right through, you don't need to be here."
Great. Thanks...
Knowing how big LAX was and knowing that I had no idea where my gate for leaving was, I started to walk around the massive circle, checking every door way for British Airways. Eventually I found it, and went inside looking for an e-ticket machine. I searched everywhere and couldn't find it. I had no bag, I had no ticket. I was feeling down. I went to someone for help.
"Excuse me, could you tell me where your e-ticket machines are?"
"We don't have any."
I was sure she must have misheard me -- maybe it was the thick scottish accent, who knows. I repeated the question.
"We don't have any, what flight are you on?"
I told her.
"Well, you'd better hurry up, it's already boarding!" - She motioned over to the check-in desk.
I made my way to the desk, now panicking that I was going to miss my flight. It was already boarding, after all.
I got to the desk and asked for a boarding pass.
"OK, and where is your luggage?"
"I. Don't. Know." (insert sad face here)
The woman could seemingly sense that I didn't want to go into details and printed off a card and pointed my in the general direction of my gate. When I rounded the corner though, I was faced by a massive security line, which I then stood in for around 30mins. Sweating over the fact that my plane was ALREADY boarding.
Once I made it through, I sprinted toward my gate.
Only to find that it wasn't boarding at all and the bitch had lied.
I sat down and called my mum, telling her the story. I still didn't know where my bag was, people were lying to me, making me worried. I wanted to go home.
The flight over to London was fine, but when I got to Heathrow, despite having been told that I wouldn't need to pick up my bag, I'd been lied to enough to still be worried that I might have to. So I followed the line as far as I could for baggage claim and asked someone to confirm for me. They said that my bag would go right through to Aberdeen. Fine.
I then made my way through another security line and walked to my gate. I didn't have a boarding pass, but I got into the gate easily enough (I really shouldn't have been able to) and I went to the customer service desk at the gate.
"Hi, could you please just double check for me that I don't need to pick up my bag before this flight."
I grew to love the woman serving me over our brief encounter. She was an older black londoner.
"Sure, can I see your boarding pass?"
"I don't have one..."
"Oh. Well, lets get that sorted first, shall we?"
She ran the check and found that my bag was, indeed, going through to Aberdeen, she then printed my out a boarding pass and sent me on my way. I wanted to hug her. She was so nice. The first warm person I'd met in any of the airports.
I went and sat down and then eventually got the flight back up to Aberdeen. When I arrived, my mum met me and we went to baggage claim. We waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. The bastarding bag hadn't come after all. It wasn't my fault though. We went and filled in a form and it was delievered to the house the next day.
The Pictures
