Never A Dull Moment...

I mean, let's be serious.....it would be WAY to boring if everything went smoothly right? So on Saturday, John Paul and I go to the Pittsburgh airport early to check in our baggage and see if we can be upgraded. First of all we had 5 bags that we needed to check (exceeding the 2 per passenger limit)....in addition to the 2 personal items we each had. Please keep in mind that these are our all of our possessions, PLUS Christmas gifts, that are not on the ocean in some container at the moment. Did any of you know that it costs $292 to check an additional bag internationally? Needless to say, we MADE our stuff fit into 4 bags. Phew, glad that is over with. Now we can relax and have a few drinks with his parents before we start the first leg of our trip to Los Angeles. Hmm, wrong again. When we arrive at the gate, we see the dreaded red lettering at the counter - DELAYED. Our layover in LA was only 2 hours to begin with; which isn't much when you are making an international connection. Although we boarded the plane about an hour later; we sat on the runway for another 45 minutes while they finished some repairs. As time passed, so did the chance of us making our connection. I thought John Paul might remove the door from the exit row and evacuate the plane right then and there. So after a 5 hour flight to LAX, we arrive knowing that we would need to rebook our flight to Melbourne. At this point, it is about 10:30pm West Coast time and we speak with the first person who doesn't want to deal with us. (Just as a FYI, this is USAirways, so keep this in mind the next time you are booking a flight through them.) She tells us to meet her down at baggage claim in 20 minutes. So I proceed to stand in line to talk to this Ding Dong again since she couldnt' seem to help us the first time around. In the meantime, JP is waiting for our luggage at the carosel. When its finally my turn, the Ding Dong says, "Sorry, I can't rebook your flight - try calling this number. However, I can give you meal and hotel vouchers." Yum...airport food and crappy hotels. After who knows how long, our bags never show - so John Paul has to stand in the line I just got out of to track down our bags. Now while HE waits, I call the US Airways hotline to rebook the tickets, then book a room at the airport Hilton. I don't trust any hotel with "Economy" in the name....I watch the news. Now its finally John Paul's turn to talk to the Ding Dong who only seems to be getting less helpful as the night goes on. Not to deviate from her past display of zero customer service - she confirms that she has NO idea where are bags are and suggests we try the international holding area in terminal 6 or 7....she's not really sure. We lug our personal items onto the bus that take us to terminal 6 or 7 and unload everything again. By this time it is close to 12:30am (3:30am EST) and the airport employees are getting more sparse by the minute. We find this random room with luggage in it and luckily find a lady working in there. We give her our claim tags and she confirms that the bags are at LAX, but she's not sure where. Hell, at least we made a little progress. We succomb to our exhaustion and hunger; trust that our bags are "somewhere" in the airport and check into the Hilton. The earliest flight that we could get out of LA was at 10:30pm the next night, so we enjoyed having a relaxing Sunday of football (for JP) and stalking people on facebook (for me). Just so you know, we got on the flight Sunday night, were upgraded to Business Class, took 2 Tylonol PM each, slept almost the entire way, and got to Melbourne safely. I'm blogged out for the moment. I'll write more later. Cheers mates!