United We Stand...Part 1

and stand and stand! Especially when "United" is the airlines. That's who we were scheduled to fly on our Christmas vacation. So, we drove to Spokane in order to save a few dollars on airfaire. Stayed the night (in order to park/fly). In the morning, Mat jumped on the Net to check sports scores when a headline caught his eye. "Storm Shuts Down Denver". WHAT? We're flying through Denver. Rather, we were flying through Denver. Not any more. All flights into Denver were canceled! ARGH! We headed to the airport to see what was up. Sure nuff, no one was going into Colorado.

I guess is was lucky for us that we were leaving earlier than the typical holiday travelers. Although United couldn't get us out until Saturday (it was now Wednesday), US Airways was able to get us out the next day. Unfortunately, to do so, we had to fly out of Boise. With the weather and the roads, we opted to drive back home then to Boise (to stay on the major highways). We even decided to do all our driving on Wednesday to beat a storm scheduled to hit the NW late that night. Good call on our part as we were told friends that we got icy rain the next day. It started to snow in Boise around lunch (at least we got to see it vs. drive in it).

So, after a very convoluted itinerary (Spokane to Phoenix to Vegas to ABQ), we arrived at our destination at 4:00 am FRIDAY! ICK! Oh, and to add more grief to the equation, one piece of luggage was missing. Oh, it's not lost until the 5th day. What was missing? The suitcase with all MY stuff. My good winter coat, my clothes, my unmentionables (egads!), my extra pair of shoes, my jewelry (yes, live and learn). Also the kids clothes and some things for Mat. The only things I and the kids had to wear were the dirty laundry for the day before (it just so happened that we put them into a different suitcase). So for the first couple of days, we were do laundry on a routine basis.

So (start counting days)...on December 26, it was officially lost. On December 29, our friend Tric called to say that, while she was dogsitting, she overheard a voicemail being left by US Air. They'd found our missing luggage in Vegas! WHOOHOO! The rep left a phone number to call. Unfortunately, he (nor the other rep who'd called the day before) made an entry into their tracking system that they'd found our luggage nor when/where it would be sent.

To be continued....