Getting a Foot in the Door...

Well, we have made it to France, and are enjoying this place IMMENSELY!  We love everything about it, (well, almost everything,) but we'll get to all that later.  

But first, just getting here was an adventure, and I have to record for posterity the grueling nightmare that we went through at LAX before we ever left U.S. soil.  This story will curl your hair, and hopefully add to your belief in miracles, as it did for me.

But even before we get to that, I have to tell you about our hot dogs.  Our flight was supposed to leave LAX in the early AM, so we drove to LA the night before, and got a hotel, but not before Dennis took us to local favorite and world famous Pink's Hot Dog stand.  He wasn't kidding about a favorite.  It was a weeknight, nearly midnight, and we stood in line for almost an hour!!!!  No kidding!!  We thought those dogs better me mighty tasty if we were gonna wait that long.  And they WERE tasty!  And HUGE too.  Mine is the long one on the left - a huge 12inch  fat jalapeno dog piled with guac, chili, grilled onions, and a bunch of veggies.  Yum!!!!  (yes, I ate a jalapeno chili dog at midnight, before getting on a long plane flight.  I like to live dangerously.)  Let me just say, I haven't eaten anything as good as that good old American dog here in France yet.  Hoping that will change.

Anyway, having plugged that commercial for Pink's (located conveniently on the corner of Wilshire and  La Brea in beautiful L.A.), I get on with our harrowing airport tale.  (We all have harrowing airport tales, don't we?  But this one really takes the cake as far as I'm concerned!)

We left the hotel very early, but by the time we dropped the car in the lot and got to the airport, we had just over a hour before it was time to board.  A sky cap met us there, and started helping us with our luggage, even though we really didn't ask her to (we can do this ourselves, you know).  But she was nice, so we just let her do her thing.  She was good! 

During self check-in, I noticed that somehow, my dad's name was showing up as Richard VanBuskirk, not Richard Signs, on the computer screen.  A problem.  Sure enough, somehow, somewhere, probably in the middle of the night when we were booking the flight, one of us accidentally typed in the wrong last name.  A small detail, right?

Wrong!!!

The names on Dad's ticket and passport didn't match, and that was a problem.  A HUGE problem.  

Just change the name.

can't

Issue a new ticket.

won't

Let him through anyway.

nope

What to do?

Buy a new ticket.  Today that seat that you bought two months ago for $800 will cost you $3,000 -

ouch

and you don't get a refund on you original ticket, by the way.

Huh?

We asked, we begged, we pleaded, and all we were left with was, "buy a new ticket at 4 times the price, or don't go." Well, paying another 3 grand was not an option for my parents, so that was it.  Poor dad!  He wasn't even there when we booked the tickets.  It wasn't his fault.  As I recall, he was sleeping on the couch when the tickets were purchased.  But he was that unfortunate one who had to stay behind.

The sky cap had already whisked all our bags away before we discovered the mistake, so she had to go and retrieve them.  Dad decided his only option was to stay home.  SO upsetting!  So when the bags came, he and mom started digging through their bags trying to decide who would take what where, and re-packing everything since my mom could only bring 2 bags, and not my dad's stuff. They were both a bewildered mess!  (We realized later that my parents nice camera got left behind in all the frey!)  Mom was so upset that dad wouldn't be coming, and Dad was understandably upset that his trip he had been planning for and looking forward to was not to be.  Dennis was busy trying to talk to anybody about hearing our story and helping us, then he was on the phone with the place we booked on line with.  I was trying hard to think about another solution, by my gears were not in full throttle due to the very limited sleep (and the aforementioned jalapeno chili dog).  I just tried to be reassuring, but didn't believe my own self.   I was no help at all. 

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking away.

We decided our best course of action was to try to find dad another (hopefully affordable) ticket to Paris in the next day or two, but nobody there at US Airways was able to help us with that.  We'd either have to walk the airport, visiting every ticket booth of every airline (no time for that!) or get online somehow.  We asked where we could get internet access.  The only place was upstairs at a gate near ours.  They had to issue dad a special pass to allow him to get through security without a boarding pass.  What a hassle!  We all went through security, including dad, and his newly repacked luggage, than ran to the pay-as-you-go internet terminals.  While mom and dad tried to get online, Dennis started calling a few wonderful friends who he knew were adept at finding good airline deals, and asked them to all start looking.   But the internet terminals were throwing fits, eating my parents' money without getting them online.

And the clock was still ticking.  

So there we were.  Dad was despondent, mom was semi-frantic, Dennis was on two cell phones at once, and I was no use at all and the clock was ticking away.  Then someone suggested we stop and have a prayer.  So we did as the clock ticked away.

Then we went back to whatever it is we were doing.  The soonest flight we could find under a thousand bucks didn't leave for 4 more days.  That wasn't going to work.  The internet station was still throwing fits, dad had pretty much given up, and mom had decided that if dad doesn't go, she didn't want to go either - France had lost ALL it appeal to her if Dad couldn't join her (who can blame her?).  

That's when I noticed that there were no passengers at our gate!  They had all already boarded.  Time to go!  We knew the time would come, but still, it came as a shock to us.  Dad just stood there shaking his head, and mom was crying knowing that dad was not too familiar with the internet, and would probably not be able to manage a search on his own.  She was terrified that he would just give up and go home.  Dennis hung up the phone, and I started trying to get all the luggage to to gate.  Then they made the last call for our flight.

That's when Dennis started flipping through the paperwork - again. On it he saw a phone number for the airline that he must have written down month's ago when he we had made the reservations.  He didn't remember ever writing it, or why he wrote it.  He had already talked to several people from the airline who all assured him they could no nothing, but he decided to call the mysterious number anyway, and explain our situation.

Not knowing what else to do, Mom and I showed our boarding passes, and went just though the gate, and just stood there on the gang plank, not wanting to get on the plane and leave our men, and not wanting to be left behind either.  We were sadly on, but our men were just a few feet away from us, and were warned that they must close the gate.  

Dennis was still on the phone, and made the hand gesture and look that maybe he was getting somewhere.  Yay!

Then he was put on hold!  AGH!

The gate attendant told us we must board now, and being no use to anybody standing inside the gate, Mom and I reluctantly boarded the plane, without our men.

And then we waited.

Anxiously we watched the front of the plane to catch the first glimpse of Dennis or Dad.  We prayed and watched and cried.  It was exactly like on the Amazing Race, when there is a close call that the couple will get on the plane, and the camera shows the front of the plane, and suspense builds and builds, and then... either the couple comes walking through that door triumphantly, or the door closes and the plane takes off without them.  I always hold my breath when that happens on the show, but it is much more stressful and suspenseful and upsetting when you are the ones sitting on the plane watching that door!

After a LONG wait (we wanted to take that for a good sign) a figure passed through the door.  It was Dennis!  Good.  What what about dad?

Then, moments later, Dad came through the door - a big grin on his face.  Dennis too, had a proud little smirk on his face.  Mom breathed for the first time in several minutes and started crying again.  He made it!

We weren't seated next to the guys, so it was a while before we heard what had happened.  but Dad was on the plane and that is all that mattered!

Later Dennis had said that whoever he had called with that mysterious phone number though she might be able to help him.  Things were very promising when they needed to shut the gate.  Then he got put on hold!  Not now!!!  The lady said she was sorry, it was too late, and went to shut the gate.  But Dennis, still on hold, stuck his foot in the door so she couldn't close it yet!  The lady couldn't get him to move his foot and probably ticked her off quite a bit.  Luckily, the lady on the phone got back on with Dennis before the gate attendant called security.  On the phone, the lady said that they could change the name on the ticket for only $250!  (Way better than $3000!)  So they quickly processed my Dad's luggage and got him onto the plane...just...in...time!

Dennis really knows how to get his foot in the door, dosen't he?  I swear, that man can do anything!!!  I love that about him.  He knows how to get things done, and will talk to anyone, anywhere to get things to work!!

What a happy flight to Charlotte that was.

Here are Mom and Dad in the Charlotte Airport.  I love that they have rocking chairs all over the terminals.  They look pretty happy to be on their way... together!

During our flight we just kept thinking about what had just happened.  I'm sure I did not explain the stress and urgency in the whole matter adequately, but it really was a whirlwind, and the fact that Dad got on that flight really was a miracle.  Tickets are non-refundable, non-transferable.  Period.  If it was just a misspelled name, etc, it might have been fixable, but it was a completely different name.  For security reasons, you just can't change something like that.  And yet, it did.  A miracle.  Really.

So many things could have gone wrong.  What if dad had left us at the ticket booth?  Or what if the internet access was down by the ticket counter, and Dad didn't have to go through security to get to the internet area?  He would have missed the flight because there would have been NO TIME to get him up through the security before the plane left.  What if that sky cap hadn't have helped us through so efficiently?  What if the internet terminals were at another gate far from our own?  What if Dennis hadn't written that number down month's ago, or didn't see it, or hadn't been inspired to call it this time?  There were many more 'what if's'.   It could have so easily gone the other way.

I believe that the prayer made all the difference.  It made it so that everything fell into place, and Dennis was inspired, and the hearts of the people in authority to make these decisions were softened so that dad could get on that plane.  It was a tender mercy of our Heavenly Father who knew several months ago that we made a stupid mistake and typed in a wrong name, and so in his goodness and mercy, he set everything up so that it could all get fixed.  I think that the power of the atonement extends beyond our sinful mistakes, to cover even the stupid ones too.

Don't you just love it when everything just works out (even if you have to go through heck and stick your foot in a door or two first? )  Me too.