alaska air ruined my christmas

after 3 delays and my friends driving me to the airport 3x, my flight out of juneau got cancelled at 1am. my rescheduled flight at 730am also got delayed in ketchikan so i still missed my seattle to vienna leg. because they were booked on separate tickets, neither airline would help me, each accusing the other of screwing up. after bawling at both the alaska air & northwest airline ticket counters and paying an extra $100, i finally got a flight out on saturday with northwest, arriving in vienna christmas eve night.

i then tried to cancel the hotel reservation i'd naively made and consequently missed for thursday night, but the smart-aleck employee said, "we require 48 hours of notice, NOT negative 12 hours." at that point i'd been awake for 29 hours, had missed 2 meals, and was emotionally stretched thin so i snapped: "Well the airline didn't give me 48 hours notice that it would cancel my flight. i waited all day and they did it at the last minute, so how could i foresee that happening to call you?! i've had a really fucking bad day, and i'm still in seatac trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself. you don't think i would have loved to take that room?? i wish i HAD gotten in last night so i could have slept in your beautiful room okay, but i didn't." fax the paperwork that i missed my flight, he said, and they'll refund me my missed res.

after the worst travel day(s) i've ever had, i'm finally staying at a hotel twice the amount of my daily budget with nothing to do. the only silver lining was i made a new friend who was on the same boat as me and had missed a flight to jakarta. he was about to fly back to juneau and forget the whole thing, but i persuaded him to fight for his trip until he got a reschedule for tomorrow morning (lucky). we were so hungry after the entire ordeal that we ran in the rain to a denny's like madmen, then ordered milkshakes and the entire breakfast menu.