San Fran Day 1 - Going Home and The Flight From Hell

Ricki & I on the Greyhound

So it's time for Spring Break 2015! On February 7th we left Kelowna in the morning to head back to my house in Washington before our flight to San Francisco. Our bus trip went smoothly, and we got home all in one piece. For the rest of the day we toured around my hometown and I got to show Ricki some of the most memorable places from where I grew up. We went down by the bay and got some coffees to keep us awake after our long journey. The next morning was also fairly uneventful! We got up around 5am to make it to the airport and after our 30 min flight to Seattle, that is when all hell broke loose...

Down By The Bay

Playing Around In The Water. 

We arrived in Seattle just fine, and settled down next to our gate for our flight to San Francisco. We got in around 8am, and then had a 2 1/2 hour wait until our next flight boarded. A half hour before boarding, the flight attendant at our gate came on the loudspeaker and told us that our flight was going to be delayed for another two hours due to high wind speeds in San Francisco. We were thoroughly disappointed, but let the next two hours go by when the same flight attendant came on the speaker and said that our new flight was going to be delayed another two hours because of the unavailability of landing spaces at our destination. We were getting very hungry and very discouraged by this point, when finally at 1:30pm (4 hours past our original flight time) the flight attendant said that we were boarding! After finally boarding and settling in our seats, we were ready to go. We were waiting for our turn to take off for around an hour, when there was jolt from the plane, and then an exacerbated sigh from the pilot who was on the loudspeaker telling us that we had to unload the plane. Everyone was pretty angry at this point, and then things only got worse when they told us why we had to get off the plane...

Gauge In The Side Of Our Plane

One of the baggage cars had driven right into the plane and made a 2-foot wide gauge in it's side. So now our plane was unfit for flying. To make matters worse, when we were finally off the plane, there was an announcement from the same flight attendant that told us that our flight had been CANCELLED and that we were all on our own to find new flights!! We instantly went into panic/rage mode and while I was on the phone with Alaska Airlines and standing in line to rebook our flight, Ricki was running all over our 'zone' to try and find someone else to help us. I was waiting behind 25 other people...so we were so ecstatic when a lady at a different gate offered to help us! She booked us on a 7:30pm flight and we were set...however on our way to prepare for our 12 hour airport wait, we ran into the original flight attendant from our first flight who then offered to force enter us onto the 3:45pm flight. We got our tickets, some free meal vouchers and then ran off to find our new gate. We got some food, and them boarded our flight. Unfortunately the trip only got worse from there...I was incredibly nauseous the entire flight, and we were sitting next to a man who wouldn't stop talking at us! After we landed we got onto our shuttle and sped off to our hotel.  The nausea stayed with me until we got to our hotel, but when we got out at our stop, we realized we had been brought to the wrong hotel. :( So we packed everything up again, and by the time we got checked in to our actual hotel I was in tears from pure exhaustion and nausea. We decided to forgo our early morning plans, and slept in until 10:30am the next morning :)

This was honestly the worst plane/travel experience I have ever had...and I solely blame Ricki because of her bad plane karma ;) 

Luckily the rest of our trip turned out pretty great...stay tuned for more!

<3 Noelle