Day One: Disaster

I am a planner, I am anal about my planning. Of course, you know what they say about the best laid plans...

We got picked up for the airport at 6 AM as planned, and arrived about 6:25 AM. I went to the kiosk to check in, and that's where the planning went right out the window. The kiosk tells me to see an agent, something about the flight to Cincinnati being delayed until 12:30 PM. Oh, great -- I immediately have flashbacks to our trip to San Francisco spending 9 hours in SLC on standby. We also got dropped off so thus have no car to even go home if something happens. Okay, so we're told to stand on a line for "the canceled Cincinnati flight", you know it's never a good sign when you are on "that" line. We go up to the counter, and are helped by a very nice lady. I was snippy with her in the beginning, but apologized at the end because she was great. She tried her hardest to find us new flights. The problem was that with our first flight canceled, we miss the connection into tiny Asheville. And there are no more seats on any other flight into Asheville. Wonderful, huh? She finds us seats on a connection through Minneapolis into Charlotte, a 2 hour drive from Asheville. There are several upsides -- it gets us out of SLC about 8:30 AM, only 45 minutes later than scheduled and into NC about the same time as the original flight (not the right city, but at least in the vicinity). The only seats she can get us on the first flight are first class! So we travel in style, getting a great breakfast and nice attention from the stewardess. Also, for our inconvenience we get $800 in vouchers for a future flight!!! I did have to switch our rental car to Charlotte though, which cost us about $150 more for the week on such short notice. But still we came out ahead, with first class and vouchers. Our two flights were on time, and without any major turbulence or incident. We arrived in hot, humid Charlotte at about 4:30 local time. With a stop for dinner and the drive, we finally arrive at our loft about 9 PM - totally and utterly exhausted after 13 hours of traveling. Needless to say, we all slept in this morning (except James who had to get up for his conference) and after a good breakfast, we are ready for vacation. And even better news, the weather is gorgeous today, low humidity and crisp mountain air :)