This weekend, Spring Break started at MSU. It wasn't that emotional, but it was usual "have a good break!" slogan that was practically spilling from everyone's mouths. My plans for Spring break were simple: Fly home, fly back. However, the journey during the first part of that plan was rather interesting.
It started out with me taking a decent nap then waking up at around 8:30-9:00pm. Given that the Michigan Flyer arrives at my specified bus stop at around 4:30am, and doesn't start boarding until 4:45am, and then leaves at around 5:00am, I needed to plan accordingly so I didn't screw up the most important part of this half of the trip: getting to the airport. I later found out that night that one my friends was actually taking the Michigan Flyer as well. So we took it upon ourselves to walk together all the way to M.A.C. from Case Hall (in 14 degree winds). We talked about our plans for Spring Break. He was going up north, I was going down south. We also briefly mentioned the airlines of choice we were flying with. I identified Spirit as my traveling companion whereas he announced Delta. I briefly told him about the joyful story about how it took Delta 5 hours to actually leave RDU during a Europe trip I went on during the summer between junior and senior. I digress; we arrived at the bus stop about forty minutes earlier than we expected we were going to. Instead of sitting outside freezing to death, we decided to go inside the Marriott and toast up a little bit. Finally, the buses arrived. One bus was going to the North Terminal and the other bus went to the opposite terminal. Since my friend and I happened to have the two airlines that didn't partner within the same terminal, we basically said our week-long "goodbye" before we boarded the buses, haha.
Now we are at the airport. The bus drops us off about 10-15 minutes later than initially planned. However online check-in, the marvelous invention it is, granted me the super power to just head straight through security instead of talking to a human being about my itinerary. Thank God. I made it all the way through and arrived at my gate. However, something seemed off. The screen didn't display "Myrtle Beach", it displayed the name of some city in Florida. The departure time was also the same as my boarding time for my flight. It was indeed, very odd. Then, literally five minutes before we were supposed to start boarding:
"Passengers assigned to the flgith servicing Myrtle Beach, your flight has been cancelled; please consult the baggage claim office for rebooking."
Are you kidding me? Cancelled?!
I was panicking. The entire flight just gone. And the reason? The pilots didn't feel like coming in that day. Tragic. So now there's this long line that spans around the entirty of the baggage claim area.
I waited in line for five hours to talk to these people. People started making calls to Spirit representatives and were getting the same answers:
"Well you can either get a full refund, wait and talk to a rep in person to get a flight for today, or wait until Monday when there's a direct flight to Myrtle Beach, again.
Needless to say I was not going to deal with any of that, so I just waited until I reached someone I could actually have a conversation with.
It literally took a matter of five minutes. She asked where I'd like to be redirected and I replied "Wilmington." She said, "Okay." We identified ILM as the airport for my final destination. The lady transferred me over to American Airlines free of charge. The only downside is that it was a two-part trip. I went from Detroit to a city in North Carolina to Wilmington.
Given that this was my first time flying by myself, it was most certainly not a pleasant experience. I hadn't eaten one thing in the entire day except a granola bar before the bus ride. I was also super tired after doing nothing the entire day at the airport.
It's just ironic because the whole thing was going just fine. Then out of nowhere, *SLAP* My life is falling apart in a matter of hours. My mom and had formulated this fool-proof argument about how I'm a college kid and I can't afford to go anywhere else and I'm from North Carolina which means I don't have any family in Michigan. Then once I step foot into the office, the lady just asks where I'd want to transfer to, and it was as simple as that.
If there's anything I've learned, it's that a trip isn't memorable or worth while if plans don't go wrong. And things definitely went very wrong for me this weekend.
