I had planned to work on the front flower bed yesterday. It's literally a jungle - it's beginning to develop its own microclimate. But first, I wanted to pin down my transportation to the Mensa Annual Gathering in New Orleans in July. I thought that might take a half-hour or so.
Four hours later....
I had earlier asked NJ and May if they planned to go. NJ had said no, because the only flights she could find out of the local airport involved either a five-hour layover in Chicago or two plane changes, and she just wasn't that excited about it. May had said "New Orleans in July? Are you kidding?! You know how hot and steamy it's gonna to be?" But most stuff happens in the *air-conditioned* hotel. I have signed up for some walking tours (the garden district and the French Quarter), but those are in the morning, and a club crawl I also want is in the evening. Most mornings are free for if one wants to go explore. Afternoons are sensibly filled with speakers and inside fun. Where's the problem?
So, I went to the first of several travel-booking sites. I wanted to leave here in the late morning, arriving early enough to get some dinner. Coming home, I wanted to leave after noon, and get home before full night.
The first site found a decent leaving flight, 10:40 am, with a one hour layover and one plane change, arriving at 5:40 pm. But they absolutely insisted that there was no return flight later than 9:30 am! Ouch! After six nights of little to no sleep, that will be tempting fate a little too much.
I was about to shrug and sign up for that when it occurred to me that maybe I should check the prices for the same flights on another site.
Second site did have better prices. Better yet, they found a return flight at noon! Perfect!
So I tried the third site. I could get the same flight numbers and times as the second, but a higher price. (This is starting to seem like buying a car! No set price.) So I went back to the second and attempted to book those flights.
I got an error message when it tried to book the package. It couldn't book the noon return flight. "Try again later." So I went to some federal sites and and read up on luggage information and security and all that, went to the airport sites and found that the security wait times for my flights are 20 minutes and 30 minutes max, average much lower, which is nice to know, kept trying to book flights, kept getting error messages.
I noticed that all four flights were the same airline. So I decided to go to the airline website and try there. Surprise! No wonder the other sites had so much trouble with the return flight - they had the number wrong! Like if the flight number was 1023, they had it as 123! So I booked through the airline directly, and got the second surprise - the cost of the round trip was 25% lower than the lowest of the other three sites.
I absolutely refuse to send my luggage through completely unlocked! I've had suitcases get mixed up and delayed too many times in the past. So I guess I'm going to have to buy one of those new bags with locks that the security folks can unlock. They won't keep criminals out, but they will stop the casual rifler/snooper.
Next I have to find Miss Thunderfoot a place to stay.
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Daughter not so casually mentioned that it's time to start riding my bicycle again. I measured my favorite loop today (trip odometer in the van) and it's exactly six miles. Now, if it ever stops raining....
~~ Silk
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