Trip type: Business

Airline: Delta

Route: MSP – SJC via LAX

Outbound

“The early bird catches the worm” are words to live by. Although not a travel novice in the least, I do not like to cut my travel time too short. (As my friend Andrea found out when she was two minutes late to pick me up for a different trip to California the other week and I was already Googling the number for a cab.) I’m always at the airport plenty early so that if anything goes awry, I’m ready to take action.

As it turns out, this worked out beautifully last week. To save over $1k on my travel, I was connecting through LAX on my way to San Jose and was starting the day with a 7:35 flight to Los Angeles. I arrived at the gate around 6:30 and after not even a minute was called to the podium.

“Ma’am, is San Jose your final destination?”

– “Yes.”

“Did you check any bags?”

– “No.”

“Would you like to take the direct San Jose flight instead of connecting?”

– “Is that a real question?”

Although already wiling to jump at the new itinerary, I did ask the agent if he could get me a decent seat as I was worried he was going to put me in a middle seat in the back of the plane. He said he thought he could do all right and handed me a new ticket for seat 1A.

Yep, I flew direct, got in an hour earlier than I was scheduled, and got a first class upgrade. Not too shabby.

Inbound

The flight home was not as magical (although really, how could it be?). I started off my day of travel getting beaned by a fly-away air hockey puck (long story but basically I was at one of those ‘cool kid’ tech conferences where they had a bunch of arcade games setup by our booth…I think you can figure out the rest. Actually, can I just side-bar here for a moment? If you’re a man reading this and you attend conferences where women are the minority of attendees, can you make a concerted effort to not be a dingbat? In addition to these guys who were so careless they missed hitting me in the eye by 1″, there was another gem of a gentleman who asked me “Did you used to be a model when you were younger?” Yes, a real person said this. Please don’t be this guy.) and was not looking forward to a very tight connection at my favorite airport (LAX) to end what had been a long week.

Boarding at SJC, we were on a small regional jet which meant we had to gate-check our bags. Usually I like gate-checking because it takes out anxiety about overhead space and makes the cattle call slightly more sane but this time I just inwardly groaned when I saw the pink tags come out because it meant we’d have to wait for the 60 or so carry-ons to be brought up when we landed.

Sure enough, even though we got in on time, I had to stand around for 10 minutes waiting for the bags to be brought around. My connection time was already scheduled for 44 minutes and I knew every second was going to count. I called my husband and asked him to look up what gate number I was going to next so that I could make a break for it after I got my bag.

Finally with bag in hand, I sprinted across Terminal 5 to the next gate and got there just as they started boarding my section. I sent my mom and E this picture from the jet bridge:

Made it with 27 minutes to spare.

This was not my closest call, but it certainly felt like it. You see, I was determined to get home not just because if I had to spend another minute at LAX I was going to lose it, but because there was a Mother’s Day celebration at my son’s school the next morning. With an arrival time of 1 a.m., there wasn’t any room for error if I was going to make it to “Muffins with Mom” and see my kid for the first time since Sunday night. Thankfully, it appears luck was on my side for this entire trip. I may have even teared up during takeoff from the relief.

And yes, I made it to muffins at 7:30 the next morning.

Evening takeoffs are the prettiest.

Trip type: Business

Airline: Delta

Route: LAX-MSP

Last week I was back to the most dreaded of inefficient airports, LAX. My hatred is both well-documented and well-earned at this point, so it was no surprise when we spent an hour on the tarmac after arriving (on time) to find that our gate wasn’t ready. I’m honestly not even fazed any more when this happens at LAX because I just expect everything to be delayed/crazy/just short of an all-out disaster. And I am always right.

At any rate, this story is actually about my trip home which has a very happy ending. I had flown to LAX in order to drive three hours to Lake Arrowhead for a Sales/Marketing retreat (life’s tough, see below). I flew out Monday and was headed home late Thursday. Because of the drive time, I was on the last flight (before the redeye) to Minneapolis for the day at 6pm, landing just after 11pm.

I was nervous about this flight time for many reasons. For starters, it was preceded by a long drive from the mountains through rush hour traffic. In greater LA. Second, there was no room for error because if I missed the flight, I’d have to hope I could get on the redeye or stay the night (which would really louse up my carefully scheduled Friday morning in Minneapolis that included getting my hair done). Third, it was the Thursday heading into Labor Day weekend…if anything makes a bad airport worse, it’s holiday travel. Finally, and most importantly, I had been away since very early Monday morning and was dying to see my beloved tiny human (and his father).

For all my worry, everything worked out perfectly. Due to some scheduling changes with my driving partner, I ended up coming down the mountain much earlier than anticipated. With great traffic on our side, I breezed into LAX at 2pm and was through PreCheck by 2:05. After checking the flight board and seeing there was a 3pm flight to Minneapolis, I raced to the gate to see if there was any chance it wasn’t completely full. As luck would have it, there were seats available and as the agent printed out my new boarding pass, I actually got a little misty-eyed–you would have thought he built me a seat on the plane himself. He might as well have.

While LAX will probably never get off my most-loathed list, getting home three hours earlier made my day.

Lake Arrowhead