Memphis in May BBQ Festival 2019 Day #4 “Heading Home?” May 19, 2019

When I last left you we had just received an email from American Airlines that our flight home had been canceled. We called immediately and then waited 40 minutes for a call back. When we finally connected our options were to return home on Monday or leave immediately for a flight to Dallas, spend the night at DFW, and take our scheduled flight home in the morning. Suddenly being retired seemed more attractive. But I am not retired and I’m scheduled to see a lot of patients on Monday so we packed quickly and asked the front desk to call a cab.

We gave goodbye hugs and kisses to our babies (much too short in the case of Erica who is returning from Memphis to Madrid). Then we hustled downstairs. We told the doorman we were expecting a cab and he said that taxis rarely make it to the hotel. He asked if we ever heard of Uber or Lyft. I guess overeating on BBQ and not shaving for a couple days makes me look like I come from the Ozarks.

Patrice called for a Lyft and was informed that Daniela and her silver Prius would be arriving in 5 minutes. Twenty minutes later and after 3 phone calls Patrice and I hustled around the corner in a pouring rain to meet up with our driver. By the way, the taxi never showed up.

According to Google maps we would arrive at Memphis Airport as our flight was boarding. When we got to the airport there was only one agent and she sounded as if she was trying to solve a difficult problem. Luckily a supervisor came to deal with the problem traveler but unfortunately we were too late to check our bags and had to take them to the gate. This meant I had to sacrifice a bottle of water that I was hoping to help quench my thirst when we arrived in Dallas (BBQ can make a person very thirsty). We were the only passengers at security and they discovered that Patrice had a jar of BBQ sauce (a gift from one of the BBQ teams) and said she had to give it up. TSA took a jar of BBQ sauce from a grandma heading home to Los Angeles. Is this part of the master plan to Make America Great Again?

Since TSA was busy interrogating Patrice I told her I’d run ahead to make sure the plane didn’t leave without us. I wasn’t completely sure which way to go but two kind airport employees assured me I was headed in the right direction. When our gate finally came into focus I saw the ramp agent closing the boarding door. I yelled out “Wait!” He turned his head, looked at me, and calmly said, “Take your time, the plane isn’t here yet”. The plane isn’t here yet? Then where are all the passengers? “This is it”, he replied directing my gaze to 3 other people waiting to board.

While waiting for the flight to take off I made arrangements for a hotel near DFW while Patrice (and later I) received this message from the American Airlines app.

Needless to say this got us concerned. Upon arrival to DFW we were exhausted and found a cab to take us to the hotel. We called American Airlines from the cab and received a recorded message saying we would get a call back in MORE THAN TWO HOURS. We decided to get some sleep and deal with this in the morning.

The next day we got an early start and headed to DFW. There we found loads of people trying to check in. Luckily we checked in online and only needed to get boarding passes and luggage tags. While I waited on line, Patrice went to an automated kiosk and successfully got what we needed and we were on our way to the plane. Then we saw this:

Fortunately we have TSA Precheck (my renewal finally arrived, after two months, just prior to our trip to Australia).

The flight home was a little delayed but we arrived relatively close to the scheduled arrival time. We then went to baggage claim only to find out, after waiting about 45 minutes, that our baggage was put on a later flight. Apparently they have had so many cancelled flights they couldn’t fit all the bags onto this one. I wasn’t happy about that but I could understand. What I didn’t understand was why weren’t we told that immediately? I didn’t need to wait for that long only to learn I needed to come back later tonight to pick up my luggage. Don’t these people realize I’m a busy man? Don’t they realize I have things to do? Don’t they realize that ON WEDNESDAY WE LEAVE FOR AFRICA?