Airplane stories...en route to Denver

I fly pretty often for work, and it seems that something goes wrong on at least one leg of my trips. If you've seen me on twitter, I've hash-tagged these as #airportstories, but it's hard to do these stories justice in 140 characters.

After summer project ended, I spent a few days hanging out with a college roommate and seeing some friends in the area before flying out to Colorado for CCC's national staff conference. The trip out there ranks among my worst flight experience ever.

The short version:
My original flight got cancelled, so I got rerouted for a flight out of a nearby airport, but I missed it and had to wait 5 hours for the next one, landing at midnight.

The long version:
I arrived at the SF airport on Saturday morning, panicked because I had left the house late that morning, genuinely concerned that I wouldn't make it in time for my flight. The good news: I got to the airport on time. Unfortunately, when I arrived, they told me that my flight had been cancelled due a hailstorm in Denver the night before that had damaged some of their aircraft. The only options were to wait until the next morning's 6am flight or to take a flight out of San Jose airport with a layover in Los Angeles, arriving at 7pm. It wasn't the most direct route, but at least I'd get there for the night meeting.

That worked out well enough. San Jose is only 45 minutes away and they gave me a voucher for a shuttle, and if I left right away, then I would be well on my way to Denver (via LA). The problem was...it was 10:30 when they gave me the voucher for a 12:15pm flight. When I got on a shuttle immediately, the driver asked me to get off and wait for the next shuttle, which didn't come for another 30 minutes (11am...already tight for my flight). I neglected to ask the second shuttle driver to drop me off first, so he started dropping off the other passengers before I spoke up, so I didn't get to the airport until 12:10. For my 12:15 flight >.<

I've never missed a flight before, but now I guess I can cross that off my bucket list. I got rebooked for a 5pm flight with a 3-hour layover in LA, arriving in Denver at midnight. As I waited, I tried calling the other airlines to see if there were any available seats for an earlier flight. Just when I thought I had a glimmer of hope on the phone with one airline that had a direct flight arriving at 6pm, it was quickly dashed to bits when I went to the corresponding counter and learned that the flight in question was, in fact, completely sold out. Argh....

I was so frustrated at the whole process, and I started playing the "If only..." game and blaming myself for being in the situation I was in.

• If only I had asked the ticket agent if I had enough time to get to the SJ airport...
• If only I had insisted that the first shuttle driver let me stay on...
• If only I had asked to be dropped off first...
• If only I had asked the ticket agent to check if there were any other flights before landing at midnight before I accepted the one he gave me...

If only, if only, if only....Somehow, I find ways to assume responsibility for things that I'm not actually responsible for. Yes, there were things I could have done differently, but there is no guarantee that any of them would have actually worked. Hopefully one of these days I'll learn to stop taking the blame for everything that could have possibly gone wrong. In the end, I got to Denver safely, I had a great time at staff conference, and I had a short reprieve before I had to face the airport again. Until next time...