09/17/2023 alarm 0615 am. Plane departs 10:09 supposedly. Target leave at 0700, leave more like 0730. So far so good. No serious problems at the airport except that the bike bag was about 5 lbs over the weight limit. How much does overweight cost? $100 domestic, $200 international. We had to fix the weight.
Our second bag was about 45 lbs--had to shift a few pounds from one to the other. Managed to get it exactly right, split even between the two bags. The kind gentleman at the ticktet counter waived the 1/2 lb we were over the 50. Turns out that the difference maker might have been my new, purchased-for-the-trip, Prologo Dimenion 143 saddle (yeah, pretentious. . . it's the bike seat). It arrived with us at the airport, in the bike bag. Somewhere between switching it from the bike bag to the suitcase it didn't make it to the suitcase. Of course this wasn't discovered until after we'd arrived in Italy. I'm not sure what came of it. I sent an email to the lost-n-found at the airport. They said they hadn't seen it. They suggested I send the same note to TSA as they keep a separate lost-n-found. We'll see. Maybe it fell out, or was not placed back in the suitcase when they were doing their little TSA inspection. So that was a bummer.
Flight out of Sac was delayed about 30 mins, or so, due to air traffic backed up at SFO. They said the air traffic controllers thought it better that we just stay on the ground in Sac rather than take off and get in the queue flying around SFO. OK, no problem.
Transfer to the next flight--no problem. When we were supposed to leave, they announced a technical difficulty they were dealing with. The few minutes turned into more than an hour as it turned out there was a radio problem and, it sounded like he said, the tech crews needed to switch out the radio. OK, it's good to have a radio.
The flight was going to be delayed even it had taken off on time becuase of the flight path they intended to take. . . for various reasons they had to fly a slower route which they talked with air traffic staff to see if there were ways to make up for lost time due to the radio repair. Must not have worked.
The flight was supposed to land at 9:45 am in Munich. Our next flight was to leave at 11:40. We arrived at about 11:20, needed to get to the gate, unload a jumbo jet, go through passport control, and get to our next gate in 20 minutes.
We weren't going to make it. But little did we know that the next flight was delayed some 30 mins. We had a chance!
Everyone got through passport control (I think there were about 10 of us on the same flights), with Robert Samms, Linda, and me being the last through.
After exiting passport control, we exited the doors--straight ahead was to baggage claim. I looked left and there was a small hallway to the G gates--I knew that our flight was in the G gates. The other 7 of our group had disappeared one of those two ways but were long gone by the time I got out.
I looked at the sign to the left, I looked at the doors in front of me and. . . I went straight.
Unfortunately, Linda and Robert came with me. I'd not asked for input from either. Why did I go straight? Sandy Yarrow had something about needing to go to baggage claim because of the late arrival of the previous flight. I thought we'd get to the baggage claim and that's where everyone would be.
Nope.
Now what?
We discussed it, I mentioned the "sign to the left" I'd seen, and thought we'd just go back the way we came and go down that hall. Climbed the stairs up to the next level (must have been 200 of 'em!) only to realize that, for obvious security reasons, the doors we'd come through were meant to be one way only--there was no way to go the other direction without violating airport security. That would have been a disaster.
So. . . back down the stairs. Huffing around a big ol' suitcase and a backpack. I shoulda grabbed a cart. We knew we had to get to the G gates so we had to find our way. Had trouble finding it, Munich's airport was not helpfully marked. Had to ask some security folks how to find it. Once on our way, we realized we were going to have to go through security again. . . a consequence of having left those doors I'd chosen.
Fortunately, the line for security was very short. The biggest holdup being Linda couldn't find her boarding pass, which was needed to open the barrier to get to the security checkpoint. Everyone was pretty frazzled by this point, with texts coming in every couple of minutes: "G47!", "they're holding the plane, run!" Of course G47 was the very furthest possible gate from where we started literally at the very end of the building, the very last gate.
I'd seen some roller carts earlier and thought I should have grabbed one as soon as I saw them. My suitcase and backpack felt like 100lbs by the time we got half way to the gate.
When we finally did get there, of course, the boarding agents looked at us like we were idiots and told us we'd missed the flight and that we'd have to go talk to the Lufthansa service counter to see about options. Woulda been ok if it had been just Linda and me, but I'd led Robert astray as well.
Schlep over to the service center. Thankfully there was no line. Later on while walking around (I'll explain why in a second) we passed the service center and there was a super long line of people looking for help. Other missed flights?
We explained our predicament to the service center person. She type-type-typed, then said "it looks like the next reasonable flight out departs 8:30 pm arrives 9:35 pm. It was about 12:30 pm at that time.
There were other flights but they were not direct and didn't end up getting to Bologna any earlier. So, we said, alright, go ahead and give us those 8:30pm tickets. The prospect of spending the next 8 hours in the Munich airport terminal didn't sound too great, but we had no choice. We considered renting a car and driving to Bologna or directly to San Marino--a little over 6 hours to Bolonga airport and about 8 hours to San Marino. It wouldn't have made sense to drive to Bologna as the bus we were supposed to meet up with was long gone--there was no reason to show up there. We ditched the driving idea.
United, bless 'em, gave us each a 14 euro voucher to use anywhere we wanted. Odd number. How'd they arrive at 14 euros? We thought we scored. Until we looked around and found that the cheapest meals were 15.90. We couldn't get a full meal paid for.
Wait around for 8+ hours we did. Around 8:00 pm, the estimated boarding time, the airline was not making any announcements for boarding. We started to get a little nervous. I checked the board above the gate and found that the flight was delayed to 9:00 pm (evidently they couldn't find a crew to fly it??). It finally started boarding at a little after 9:00 pm, departed around 9:30.
It dawned on me while sitting in the plane that we were going to need to find a taxi to take us from BLQ to San Marino. I broke out the phone and started Googling taxis out of Bologna. I found a company and made a reservation, which was difficult to do given the short timeframe. Just shy of $300, taking 25% down. We were leaving at 9:30 and we were going to need the taxi at around 10:45. I made the reservation, received an email that said that they'd look at the needs and send a confirming email "in a couple of hours"!
I worried and fretted the entire flight thinking that they'd not be able to do it. Sure enough, after landing and finally re-establishing internet service, there was an email from the taxi company apologizing for their inability to fulfill the request. Thank goodness, because Roberto and Sandro from Hotel Alexander arranged for a taxi to be there for us. . . and he was there--Remo was the driver's name. If the other company hadn't fallen through we would have been out the $300 for that ride on top of the $320 we paid Remo to take us to Hotel Alexander.
We arrived finally at about 12:30 am Tuesday morning. Didn't get to bed til about 1:15. I didn't sleep from 6:15 PDT Saturday until 1:15 am Tuesday morning, CET. . . about 43 hours. Yep we were tired.
There's not much to talk about at the airport. It was a long, LONG wait. Super boring.
We found out after we finally got to San Marino that Doug Schierer organized a defacto gofundme for us and collected $130--nearly half our total fare. That was super cool.
