Today didn’t go so well for both Yuka and I. Yet I was surprised at myself for not getting so ballistic over what had transpired. We had a plane flight early at 6:30 am with Southwest Airlines. We woke up super early at 3:30 am in the wee morning, all red-eyed, got ready, waited and waited for Super Shuttle van to come pick us up, at around 4:15 am, except the van never came. So, I had to get my iPad and called Super Shuttle via VRS. I finally got on a call with a live rep. and told her about our situation. She said that all Shuttle van drivers are occupied and wouldn’t be able to get us picked up. WTF is this?, I thought. Instead, she’ll call a cab driver to come get us, at no extra charges. Ok fine, I said. The cab driver came rather quickly; I thought it’d be much later even we had lost significant amount of time waiting for Super Shuttle anyways. I was getting worried about not having enough time getting to the airport, and sure enough, by the time we got there, there were lines of people waiting as if it was an amusement park, these kind of lines that take an hour or longer. You just knew. I must admit—I underestimated the situation that there’d be fewer people at the airport but no. Acting on my survival instincts, I tried to look for a shorter line or something, and then saw a Southwest rep agent who was standing near the long lines and it looked like she was helping monitor or direct people to the lines. I walked to her and showed her our flight itinerary, hoping perhaps she’d sympathize and get us bypass the line. She looked at it and told us we can wait here and she’d get the tickets for us. She got back to us with our tickets but told us we’d have to wait in the line behind other people to check in our bags. Great, no such luck, I thought. It took us a good half hour before we finally got to the front desk and checked in our bags. We quickly went up to the upper floor and saw that security line was also full of passengers too. That’s when I knew we may not be able to make it to the gate and it took almost another 25 mins before we could get through the security line and we walked as fast as we could to get to the plane gate but the doors had gotten closed. It was 6:25 am. The plane was due to depart at 6:30 am, so I was kinda surprised it’d leave that sharp. Usually, it’d take few more minutes before it undocks from the gate for good. I suspect the plane was already full so they closed the doors sooner than usual. So, we had to go to a tickets booth again to reschedule our flights but all flights were full till the next day. FML.

Naturally, I was disappointed at myself for letting this down and missing the flight, like maybe we should have left sooner, but it all started with Super Shuttle not picking us up and not anticipating the rush hours at both heavy lines at the airport. Those just ate up time. I guess we’ll use Lyft or Uber next time. Despite the whole thing, I noticed I wasn’t as let down as I thought I’d be. One lost day. Perhaps that’s because I have someone now at my side, my wife. As we were walking back to head out of airport, I saw a Mexican tacos shop that was opening for breakfast and thought it’d be nice to get breakfast burrito. My stomach seemed to agree and make grumbling sounds. My wife seemed to read my mind and said she wanted to get some Starbucks coffee. Then, I realized we’re on xmas vacation after all, as I stepped into another line for my burrito.