But before we got to MT, we had a rather stressful adventure that only re-confirmed L's title as "best husband in the world" - evidenced by the fact that I'm still alive and well enough to be blogging about it.
So, we got some cheap-ass tickets on Allegiant air from PHX to MT. We crashed with my mom the previous night and planned to get to the airport with about 2 hours to spare for a 2:40pm departure. I knew we flew out of Phoenix, so around 12 we headed out to the airport remote parking, pleased with ourselves that we had given everything enough time and commenting about how relaxing it was not to have to frantically rush around like crazy people. The shuttle driver picks us up, heads to the airport, but can't, after 7 years fo working as a shuttle diver, figure out which terminal we depart from.
Now, normally this would have been a flashing red light, but considering he told us he was a liberal pastor who found Jesus while stoned off his ass in a field with a bunch of hippies about 30 years ago, it didn't actually strike us as odd that he didn't really know where he was going. So he dropped us off at a terminal, said "here you are!" and went along his merry way.
We go inside. No Allegiant. We ask at the information booth: "Oh, Allegiant doesn't fly out of here, Allegiant flies out of Phoenix-Mesa, about 30 miles away." It's 1:15. Panic ensues. We run back out to catch the next parking shuttle back to the lot when L calmly (seething, but calmly) asks, "you didn't notice that the airport abbreviation was NOT PHX?"
No. I'm sorry. Please don't kill me?
Rarely have I felt so dumb in my life. In fairness, I had no idea Phoenix HAD two airports, and the one we flew out of only opened in 2007 and only worked with Allegiant flights.... but I still felt (feel) awful.
And it gets better: Our flights were so cheap b/c there Allegiant flies to each destination only once, and only on 2 days a week. Our flight to MT? Only once on Fri and once on Mon. We miss the flight - shit out of luck until the following Friday.
We get to the car, get on the freeway and get stuck behind a cop whose going 75. I'm on the phone with airport (no, they can't put me through to an Allegiant representative, the Allegiant desks DO NOT HAVE PHONES), or trying to get through to Allegiant HQ ("We're sorry, due to a high volume of phone calls we cannot take your call at this time").
And L is still calm - freaked, but calm - or, at least not ripping me several new ones, so that's good.
We finally got off the freeway, through some tense red lights, and pulled into the airport at 2:10. I run frantically up to the check in and ask if we can still check-in for our flight. The woman at the counter proceeds to lecture me about how we've missed the 40 min pre-flight deadline for check in and that she really shouldn't allow us to check in at all, but then points me to a line with "the other MT people". A line about 20 people long, none of whom have checked in either.
So thanks to the glorious inefficiency of their check -in system, and L's mad driving skills, we made it on the flight with a bit of time to spare.
That happened to L and I once in DC. Except that the day before my parents had actually asked him if he was sure he was leaving out of Dulles and not Reagan and while totally absorbed reading something on his laptop he just said "yes" without actually checking the ticket. The next day we got to Dulles two hours before his flight (which went through Newark) only to find out it was at Reagan (also about 25-30 miles of distance between the two, but also with extremely unpredictable traffic). Luckily since the flight was through Newark on Continental, all we had to do was check with the guy at the Continental desk about getting on another flight, and after hearing his lecture about checking tickets before getting to the airport, he took pity on us and let L take the next flight out of Dulles to Newark so he wouldn't miss his connection to Berlin.
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