I know that if you travel enough once in a while all the forces conspire to give you a truly bad trip. This trip is, apparently, mine. That said, it's not too bad. Here's what's been happening. I got up early on Sunday to get to the airport. I don't like getting up early but I accept that it's necessary. However, my flight was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Then it was finally cancelled. I was too busy fruiting around on the free wifi to get in line quickly enough to complain, so I got to twiddle my thumbs on hold (yay for cell phones) and figure out my next move. US Airways said they could get me out the next day. Jet Blue said they could get me out in a few hours. These two airlines don't really talk to each other in a computer fashion however, so it was time to shell out for a new ticket and hope against hope that the conference people would see this as a necessary added expense. As usual, my lack of "What would a normal person do in this circumstance?" sense means that I had far more nervousness choosing this route then I might have otherwise.
JetBlue got me out of there at 4 pm and then stuck me in JFK for a few hours, and on the tarmac in a rainstorm for an hour more. I got into San Juan at 1:45 in the morning -- this is totally a normal hour for me, not so much for other people on my flight -- and was in bed and asleep at the Intercontinental by around 3. My room faces the ocean. It's nice. The room they tried to put me in faced the highway and was right up against the elevators. I traded it in. I don't think I took anything out of my bag there. When I unpacked I realized that my stuff was soaking wet. Not like a little damp, like dripping wet. This was mostly okay. I hung stuff out to dry. One of my shirts may be a little screwed up. When I got back from my trip to Old San Juan today (more on that later) I went to offload my photos and realized my camera cable wasn't in my bag. Neither was my battery charger. Neither was my dongle, the stupid expensive dongle that I need for my laptop to talk to the projector. In fact everything in the side pocket of my bag was ... gone. Solving these problems takes time. I didn't lose anything I can't replace, but I do sort of need that dongle for my talk tomorrow. CompUSA has one I can buy, but I'll have to spend all day tomorrow on busses (or $40 on cabs) to buy one. I was hoping to go to the beach.
I've spoken to people at the places where I think I might have left my stuff, in case maybe this was my own fault. My day yesterday was pretty long, I forget things occasionally. I worried that when I told JetBlue that TSA left not one but two "we inspected this!" tags in my bag that they might hand off resposibility to them, but I guess that's not how they operate. They say they're treating this like a "pilferage" as if anyone wants my stupid cables. I'm treating it like a "some things fell out of my bag" case, but one that happened on JetBlue's watch. I talked to my contact here today and he mentioned something about being on "Carribean time" and said he didn't even know if my talk was going for 90 minutes as we discussed or 60 or even when it started. With this sort of approach, I'm not biting my nails down worrying about it, seems like they'd be happy with a decent puppet show and maybe a few duck jokes.
Labels: jessamyn, me, puerto rico, travel
6/04/2007