Another "gift", courtesy of United Airlines: our flight out of Seattle, originally booked for 7:30 AM, was rescheduled to 6:20 AM. We dragged ourselves onto the hotel's 5 AM shuttle and got through the usual rigmarole to get onto the plane. We'd had enough miles to book this in Business Class so we had more room and a real breakfast, but in retrospect Southwest's nonstop may have been a better option.
The connection was in Houston. Yes, look at the map. It made no sense to send us that far out of the way, but these schedules are for the convenience of the business, not its customers. Both Ron and I were dragging pretty badly due to the colds we'd picked up, so we decided that the 2-hour layover was long enough that it justified another visit to the United Club. It was blessedly free of blaring announcements and those infernal beeping carts.
We arrived at MCI half an hour late, very much looking forward to being picked up by the car service. (Two weeks of airport parking would have cost just about as much as the car service and we liked the convenience.) Surprise. As we retrieved our luggage and were looking for our driver, they called. They were having problems with scheduling because so many planes had arrived late at MCI but they could get a driver there in 1.5 hours. I told them that was unacceptable. They told us we were free to make other arrangements. Would they pay the extra cost? No. (Angie's List will hear about this.) After a lot of fumbling we found another service and got home before our original service would have picked us up.
This trip certainly had its share of tech fails and health issues, but we're both grateful to have been there and experienced Alaska again. We're thinking, in fact, of going back again and doing an independent itinerary. Twice in a lifetime may not be enough!
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