At the Airport! (And How Travel Never Goes Quite the Way You Expect)

Hey all!

I'm sitting at my gate in Nashville waiting to board, though it's been a bit of an interesting journey thus far. Pam and I left Huntsville around 1:30am to arrive at the airport at 4:00am as planned, with plenty of time left for my 6:30am flight to Chicago. We parked, and got out of the car, and I happened to glance up at one of the screens outside and saw that my flight was not on time, not delayed, but canceled. Since I've always had fairly good luck with flights being on time and scheduled and going as planned, it threw me for a loop until I was reassured that I wouldn't be charged for any re-routing.

After waiting about half an hour for the United Airlines staff to show up for the morning shift, I was informed that since I had checked in early online and the second leg of my trip was with All Nippon Airways, United was not able to re-rout me because ANA will not release a booked seat to another airline. The extremely helpful staff at United gave me the phone number to call but ANA's US offices don't open until 5:30am PST, which is 7:30am Central. By this time I had been waiting at the counter for about two hours, so I only had about another hour to kill. So I bought some internet time and some caffeine, and proceeded to update Interac with the developments. When 7:30 rolled around, I called ANA and they were more than happy to help me out, as were the patient staff at United, who also were kind enough to wave the overweight baggage fee that I would've incurred (whoops!).

I just finished updating Interac with the new itinerary and I'll still be arriving in Tokyo just in time to meet up with my new co-workers. So now that I know how I'll be traveling, here is the updated information:

United Airlines
Flight: UA7994
Depart: Nashville, US (BNA)
21-Mar-10 (Sun) 08:57a
Arrive: Wash/Dulles
21-Mar-10 (Sun) 11:52a

United Airlines
Flight: UA897
Depart: Wash/Dulles
21-Mar-10 (Sun) 01:28p
Arrive: Narita/Tokyo
22-Mar-10 (Mon) 04:30p

So there you go! Thanks to the incredibly helpful airport staff at United as well as ANA, and not to mention the support and encouragement of my partner in crime, I'm all set to go off on the next great adventure. Here's hoping my bags follow me to Japan and that I haven't forgotten anything critical (especially since I finished packing about half an hour before we left Huntsville, so you can probably guess how much sleep I got)! My next update will be from the opposite side of the Pacific, so look out for it!

I also just wanted to make a brief mention of how incredibly grateful I am to all of my friends and family. Everyone has just been so supportive and loving and understanding and while leaving my home country is the hardest thing I've ever done, it's also been made so much more effortless because I know I get to come back to you all. Much love to everyone and I will be thinking of you guys!

More soon!