My senior year of high school fall break, my family went to Kauai, Hawaii.
When we were trying to leave the island to go back home, it was brought to our attention that nobody flying standby has flown back to the states in 2 weeks, we were going to have to fly to the capital island.
Background story: My family flies standby because my father is a pilot for Delta.
Standby literally means you “stand by” the gate until you are cleared to get on the flight, and you only can get on the flight if there are extra seats left over. Anyone who works for the airline gets standby tickets. There is a list that is ranked by the employee’s hire date. Cool thing is that it is free unless you travel internationally, and you have to pay a little tax fee that is nothing compared to a regular ticket. This is the biggest blessing, I swear y’all need to marry pilots or work for an airline. This is the only reason I get to travel like I do.
Back to the story: My family and I flew to Honolulu, spent a day there, and then went to the airport to fly back to ATL.
On the flight, I sat next to this cute boy and his mother. We started to talk about our trips and whatever movies we planned on watching during the flight. I was kind of getting a fruity vibe from him, Micheal, and figured he might be gay (dang). Also, turns out they fly standby too because Micheal’s sister is a flight attendant AND they were coming from Maui (another island) because standby passengers couldn’t get on a flight there either. Then we landed, said goodbye and went our separate ways.
EXACTLY one year later (literally): I am now a student at Kennesaw State University. I was walking to get lunch on campus with my friends when I see this really familiar guy. I said, “Hey I think I sat next to that guy on a plane one time.” Before I knew it, I was marching right up to him and boldly stated, "Hey did I sit next to you on a plane coming home from Hawaii one time?” Then he screamed and we both freaked out a little, making everyone stare. Of course, we had to send a selfie to his mother, who was also as ecstatic as us. We talked for a little deciding we totally had to travel together, exchanged info, and went our separate ways again.
Skip to a few months later: We are now planning our first trip together over Christmas break, how exciting that was.
Then this funny thing happened the day before we were going to leave. The airport electricity shut down, and all flights to an from Atlanta where canceled, hilarious right? The next day for the first time in history, there was an embargo on standby passengers flying, cool. The day after that when I rolled out of bed, I called Micheal, and said, "Are we doing this thing?"
He said yes.
So we packed our bags with sweaters and bathing suits, listed ourselves on a flight to LAX in the car on the way there and ran through the airport to our gate.
Let me explain for a second how much of a risk it was to be flying standby on this specific day. So there is this thing called “HK,” which us standby’s call “hope killers” because they are passengers who paid for a ticket but got bumped off a flight for some reason (like the all of the ATL flights being canceled in one day). So they go on the list with all of the standby passengers except they are all top priority, giving us little chance to get on the flight. This day, there was a lot of hope killers and standby people trying to fly, perfect.
Well, we didn’t make it on that flight to LAX, so we ran around the airport from gate to gate like crazy people trying to get on any flight that we could. We tried to go to Ecuador, Hawaii, Belize, Costa Rica, Chile, and more that I can’t remember, but we finally tried again on a LAX flight and somehow by the grace of God slid onto that guy. In LAX, there was a midnight flight to Costa Rica that looked decently open, so we decided to go for it. Long story short, we didn’t get on (we would have if we didn’t go to another gate trying to find comfy chairs to nap on, to not even nap, and couldn’t list for our flight, so we went to the bottom of the standby list).
Then we didn’t want to pay for a hotel; therefore, we slept on the airport floor, which was the most sleepless night maybe of my life. But it is okay. At 8:00 in the morning, we tried to get on a flight to Hawaii, and what do you know, WE GET ON THE PLANE!! We were about to take our seats when the gate agent runs down and pulls us off the plane because these people who bought their tickets just showed up late (which you are not really supposed to do once the door is closed but whatever lady). We walked off the plane all discouraged, to see the gate directly next to us with nobody on the standby list to Cabo San Lucas. I have never heard of the place before but before I knew it we were sitting in first class seats to Mexico and booking a hotel on Micheal’s phone (mine sucks).
In Cabo: we are great bargainers, we were there for 3 nights and spent less than $200 overall. That is a whole long story I could tell too, but this is already getting pretty long, so I will save that for another time. Also, everyone in Cabo thought it was our honeymoon, which at first we were like uhh NO, but then we just started going along with it (aka give us that honeymoon discount). (and I think people who don’t know me personally that follow me on social media think we are dating, which I understand, but we are not each other's type. One= straight, the other= NOT)
Back in Kennesaw: So Mike is my BFF. We are now talking about where we can go next.
Tried to do weekend trips, but never found a time our schedules matched up, so we agreed on Spring Break of course. OH YEAH, and it turns out we live on the same floor? Just different building numbers, but they connect. So yeah this friendship was 100% “meant to be” as they say.
Spring Break: We get on the first flight straight to San Jose, Costa Rica (thankfully no running around the airport). But then in Costa Rica is when we faced our transportation issues. We uber to our bus station to find out (by Micheal speaking in Spanish that he learned in High School to locals) that our bus hasn’t come by all day. Need I mention barely anyone speaks English here. So these kind people let us cram into a taxi with them to another bus station, where we waited three hours for our bus to drive straight past us three times. At this point, we just wanted to go anywhere but this bus station, so we got on the next bus that was going to Playa Jaco (originally trying to go to La Fortuna).
When we arrived, we walked around to more than 15 different hostels and hotels trying to find a place to stay, and they were all full. You know the type of frustration where you are so annoyed you can’t even form words to describe how you feel nor do you even want to move your mouth because you are that tired, yeah that is the point we were at. EVENTUALLY, right as it got dark we found a place with an open room. Stayed for two nights, and then off to Manuel Antonio on another bus, which we waited an hour for (you see this is Easter weekend, so the buses weren’t running their regular schedule). When we made it to our hostel, which by the way was one of the coolest places I’ve ever stayed, everything was (almost) perfect from there on out. We hitchhiked a few times, saving money on buses and our feet from the walking distance. Highly recommend, just be safe.
In Costa Rica: Y’all this place is beautiful like the type of beautiful that makes you wipe your eyes and your mind thinks “is my eyes really seeing this?” It is constantly a 360 beautiful view. On the beach, it is not just a beautiful view of the beach, but the jungle that is directly behind you is too. And we just got to see a small portion of the country. We could have spent months here exploring all of its wonders. Also, the people are all so super duper nice and helpful.
It was totally fate that we meet each other. Fate that we are just meant to travel the world together. Fate that we are to be best friends. I guess the point of this is that if God wants someone in your life, He Will place them there, and I now have the best travel buddy. And the fact that all of the pictures from traveling may seem all perfect, but it is a lot of work to get there. If traveling is something you want to do, you can make it happen, you just have to be willing to do the work to get there, just like anything else in life.
But every bit of it is worth it. I don’t regret one thing. Also, marry a pilot. Xoxo