Las Vegas to Seattle in only 14 hours

Las Vegas to Seattle is a little over 2 hours by plane – for normal people. For me, it is a 14 hour gauntlet of misdirection, sleep deprivation, and fairly decent burritos.

It all started with a 7pm flight that wasn’t. I dutifully arrived at 5:30 pm, sailed through TSA (they are very efficient in Las Vegas), and was at the gate by 6pm. The screen said that the flight was delayed 45 minutes. “No problem,” thought I, “I’ll just sip on a $12 glass of wine poured from a $3 bottle and wait for a bit.”

By 10pm, I was getting antsy. By midnight, I realized that I actually lived in this town and had a nice warm bed with a spouse and cat (or two), any of which would be much more comfortable than the airport seats. I waited in line to attempt to get another flight or to rebook. I didn’t have to be in Seattle until 4pm the next day, so, in my little brain, there was still time.

After skootching ever so slowly through the line, while lugging my luggage (oh! Now I understand the origin of that word…), I finally got to the little desk. When I asked why all the flights were delayed, the very frustrated, tight-lipped man simply said, “Weather.” What weather? Where? It’s July!! Sunny here in Vegas, sunny there in Seattle (OK, maybe that anomaly alone was enough to ground planes…but I digress…) what do you mean, weather? What were we supposed to do in the mean time? Were there upgrades, other flights, something, ANYTHING that would help us get to where we were supposed to have already been hours ago?

The nice man then went into a tirade about how the airlines cannot control the weather, and how we wouldn’t sue a car dealer for potholes in the road.

Huh?

My travel agent was traveling herself, so she couldn’t help. She did text me back and suggested that I try a supervisor to see if I could get a morning flight. I practically had to tackle one as she went whizzing by, and all she gave me was a phone number. “We can’t control the weather,” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared back behind the “employees only” zone from where she had come.

I asked the nice, not busy, lady from another airline what the weather problems were, and she looked at me quizzically. “We haven’t heard anything,” she said.

Sigh.

Working as best as I could through the language barrier and cheesy hold music that went on and off, I explained my flight plight to the gentleman on the customer service line.  I had my laptop fired up, so we went online together to get me on another flight. He said that the best he could do is to put me on a 5:45 am flight to Phoenix, then a 10 am flight to Seattle. “You see,” he informed me, “this airline doesn’t actually fly to Seattle.”

Huh?

I watched in horror as my flight to Seattle disappeared, then a flight to Salt Lake City appeared. “There, he said, that should do it.” 

“Seattle isn’t in Utah,” I gently reminded him.

“Oh, yeah…” he said, and then put me on hold again. I hope he meant, “Oh, yeah, I forgot you were going to Seattle because we’ve been so slammed by all these reroutes due to weather” and not “Oh, yeah, that’s right, Seattle is in New Guinea.”

I watched the flights change again on the screen. Now I was going to Arizona and back again, and my flights were all lined up. All six hours of them. Six hours of flying to get two hours away. Plus, a three hour layover in Phoenix. Whee.

I called my dear spouse to come get me. I could at least get two or three hours of sleep before I had to be back at the airport again. Maybe have a fried egg and cup of coffee. My tummy was complaining. It was 1:00 am.

I won’t go into how he managed to get lost trying to swing around the airport (this was his first time there) after the cops waived him off the first pass. About 30 minutes of sitting on the curb later, we were merrily following the GPS back home. He was taking no chances of getting lost again.

It seems that everyone wanted to route me through Arizona. The GPS took us all the way to Henderson, around the back of the airport, then up again to Tropicana – the street that the airport is just off of. The street that is also only one block off of OUR street. The airport is 10 minutes from our place. Apparently, it’s 45 minutes to get back. Vegas is a weird and wonderful place.

The saga (including burritos) continues tomorrow.