Traveling Trials

I've learned when traveling through airports that you just have to go with the flow and take it as it comes to you.

I got to St Louis in one piece with all of my luggage in tact, except I left a few vital pieces in the luggage I decided not to take. Like personal hygiene items (I managed to grab a few at least) Fortunately it is something I can replace when I get to FLW, but in the meantime, well, I will have to purchase some heavy duty hair gell, some clips and some hair bands to make sure my hair is squared away for duty tomorrow.

So the first task I ran into was having one piece of luggage to many, and not wanting to pay the fee to have the army reimburse me later.

As soon as I walked through the security, they did a random check on my shoes, and my shoes caused an alarm so they had to pat me down. The best way to handle these situations is to cooperate as best as you can.

When I got to Denver, the plane was overbooked, as I had mentioned previously, but I had time to get to my destination so I volunteered up my seat and had a four hour layover in Denver with a detour to St Louis through Chicago with a carrier change.

I forgot how big O'Hare airport is. And moving from United to American Airlines meant I had to leave one terminal and hit another. I wasn't scheduled to get to St Louis until around 10:30 but I decided to work on getting Standby for the two St Louis flights leaving before my scheduled flight. So I asked for standby at the ticket counter and without anything to check, apparently I came up as suspicious and with a heightened threat level, when I went through security, I got patted down and my stuff was swabbed as an extra precaution. Again, the only thing you can do is cooperate and be as pleasant as possible.

Fortunately, I got cleared to leave on a flight an hour before the one I was scheduled to take was to leave. But in the meantime, now I'm waiting for my busride to FLW.

I remember this thing being free the last time I came through here. Oh well, another expense to add to my Travel Voucher. I'll be sure to hang onto the reciept.