Fun With Travel!

The sister is getting married on Tuesday night in Puerto Morelos, Mexico (just south of Cancun). We were scheduled to depart Casa Hoffman at the ungodly hour of 5 am this morning to make a 6:20 flight out of San Jose, connecting through Phoenix.

Well.

The car service is about 20 minutes late, as the driver can't find the house---although he's been here many, many times before---we still figure, okay, it will be pushing it, but we can probably still make it, especially since it is so early and thus no traffic, etc.

Think again, grasshopper. We get to the airport, I'm wrangling stroller and carseat while Gene runs inside to get us started with check-in. Arrive to hear the words "We can't go". Uh...why not? Well, apparently because we have an international LEG on the flight, we were supposed to be there 90 minutes before hand so that they could "input our documents". Let's ignore the fact that it takes 5 minutes to input three passport numbers, and that, technically speaking, we WERE within 90 minutes of the international LEG of the flight. It was utterly hateful and seemed so damn pointless. We do suspect, though, that if we had been able to show up at 5:30 as planned, we probably would have been allowed on, given that they told us to show up tomorrow "no later than 5:15". Last time I checked, that is 65 minutes before departure, not no 90 minutes, but whatever. Fascist gate agents have the power.

Got home, called Avis to reschedule, left a mesage for our travelling companions from Phoenix to not fret if they didn't see us, left a message for the dogsitter to sit tight until tomorrow, and then I tried to tackle international phone numbers to deal with the hotel. Combine no coffee, little sleep, and pregnancy brain, and it takes a while. The good news is that everyone speaks English in Cancun because it's basically Miami Beach with tequila; the bad news is that I wasn't really making myself understood because the woman on the other end kept telling me they didn't have our reservation. Turns out we were looking at the wrong hotel. Eye roll. At any rate, we are okay to check in tomorrow, though of course we have to pay for tonight. Whatever.

At the risk of sounding like renegade family, we are shockingly gleeful to have a freebie day at home before dealing with both travel and wedding shenanigans. Nearly everyone is flying in tomorrow ANYWAY, so it's not as though we are wreaking havoc on tightly detailed plans; we are already packed, so that's one more thing off the to-do list, and we can definitely hit the hay early tonight to try and reverse the effects of two mornings of god-awful early wakeups.

But we did insist that the driver show up at 4:45 tomorrow morning.