Staring at the beginning, things were going smoothly. Monday night I headed to Queens to stay with a friend of mine who was coming with me because she lives right by the airport. After getting just a little lose, because it always seems to happen at least once when I'm driving, I got there and we had dinner. Heading back to her apartment for a while we (kinda) discussed the shows for the rest of teh month before making a midnight run to Dunkin Donuts. I finally crashed around 2 after been up since 6am the day before while my other two friends toughed it out and stayed up. At 4, Jon personally woke me up (via my WWWB ringtone). After repacking the little I took out the night before and quadrouple checked my ID and confirmations, we got a cab at 4:30 and headed to the airport.
Because we couldn't check in the day before, we went to a kiosk where it again refused to let us check in so we headed to the ticket counter where we first met our guardian angel, Javier. He checked us in and gave us our boarding passes (LaGuardia to Milwaukee and Milwaukee to Omaha). Thanking him we headed through security, which was surprisingly crowded for 5am, and proceeded to our gate. Around 5:45 Javier (who magically appeared) came over to where we were sitting and told us that after we checked in out flight had been delayed from 7 to 8:40. We thanked him and he told us that our connection wouldn't be a problem since it was the same plane. After checking in at home so my mom didn't panic when I didn't check in at 7 when I got on the plane, we waited "patiently" not wanting our flight to be delayed anymore.
A little before 8, Javier came over to us again and told us that our flight from Milwaukee to Omaha was canceled and to see the guy at our gate to be rescheduled because he was working on a flight at another gate. Immediately we went over and waited what seemed like an eternity for him to get off the phone. Just to remind you, the three of us, who are on a mission to see Jon, are working on a collective 3 hours sleep. Over the next half hour or so he tired his best to help us but the Milwaukee airport kept changing their story. First the airport wasn't allowing departures, then the whole airport was closed, then our flight was the only one canceled. After putting up with this endless and meaningless circle, we were told because of the fog if we were able to get TO Milwaukee there was a good chance that we weren't getting out so the search for an alternate connection began with him telling us the earliest he could get us in was 4 when ticket check in was at 5.
Finally Javier came back over to us and went to work getting us there, through another
city AND early enough. He started making reservations for us and personally called the airport in Minneapolis/St. Paul, out new connecting city, to ensure we didn't have weather delays. He printed out confirmations for the 10:10 Delta flight. Seeing it was after 8:30, we thanked him repeatedly and quickly made our way to the shuttle to take us to the Delta terminal and go thought security again. As we read through the confirmations he handed us we saw that he left us his name and number in case there were any problems. Even checking in at Delta their ticket agent told us that he took care of everything so all she had to do was print our passes.We got to the gate with about 25 minutes to spare and were relieved to see that it was on time. After the ordeal we had already been through we became overly panicked when a Delta employee asked us if we were on the Minneapolis flight for fear that it had been canceled or delayed (in either case we planned on calling Javier) when she was only trying to tell us that there was Wi-Fi on the flight.
(And that's Wi-Fi girl) We finally boarded with our flight and made out connection in Minneapolis smoothly. We were SO thankful to hear our flight crew say the three magic words..."Welcome to Omaha!"After sleeping a but on the flight we are "refreshed" now having a collective 7-ish hours between us. We called the hotel and asked them to sent their shuttle for us. Arriving at teh hotel we went to check-in, only realizing that Priceline made a mistake and there was no room for us and the hotel was booked. Frustrated, exhausted and homeless, we contemplated calling Javier to save the day again. Deciding against it the front desk worker at the hotel was able to find us another hotel in the area with a room for us. (Boy people are nice and helpful in other parts of the country). Taking their shuttle to our new hotel, we checking in problem free. We went up to our room and unpacked a little as we started to get ready for the show. A little before 4 we tried to order pizza to ear, since we hadn't eaten since Dunkin' Donuts 17 hours earlier, but they insisted that they didn't deliver until 5. (Ummmm seriously??)
TO recap the day so far...Javier saved our trip, our flight was a disaster, our hotel was a disaster (leaving us temporarily homeless) and now we can't get fed. Now we're just waiting for something to go wrong at the show or with our tickets to complete our day from hell, knowing full well this will send us into inconsolable hysterics. Eventually we gave in and ordered the food at a time when they delivered. Around 5:40 we headed to the lobby to take the shuttle to the Qwest Center. But the show, that drama, details, pics and video will be in Part III (I guess that's technically what it is) but I will tell you that Jullian was about 5 seconds away from making me cry.
Wednesday morning went as smooth as can be up until this point (written on the flight from Milwaukee to LaGuardia and it THANKFULLY ended that way). And we bought Javier a postcard from Nebraska thanking him again because without him NONE of the trip, and it's subsequent disasters, would have been possible. Hopefully we'll get to see him for ourselves one more time. But we didn't see him but you can bet your asses I'm getting that thing mailed.
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