Michigan Trip, Part 1

Oh man,  what a doozy of a trip!

I was worried so much about meeting C’s son and his mother than I didn’t even think about what else could go wrong…and boy did it!

The morning of the trip C went to the bank to get some cash out for the trip.  He had lost his debit card earlier in the week (and reported it lost so there was a hold placed on the account) and we were just going to have to use cash the whole trip.  Well…the hold apparently didn’t “hold” and someone found his account and drained it.  Seriously.  He had $8 to his name.  I am so angry at this bank that I don’t really even know what to say.  I work for a bank….I don’t know how in the world a hold can be placed on an account and it still gets drained.  Ugh. Still makes me mad. 

So ten minutes before we left for our trip we had to call my parents to see if they could loan us some money.  Which is perfect, because they were on a week-long trip celebrating their anniversary.  Nothing like one of your adult kids calling you with a crisis on your actual anniversary date.  I had to keep them on their toes J

So we get that covered and make our way to the airport.  Where we sit. And sit. And sit some more.  The first announcement tells us our plane has a little issue and they need to fix it and then we will be on our way shortly.  Next, they are still trying to figure out the issue.  Ok, now they’ve solved it and they are getting the part.  Still waiting on the part to get here.  Got the part, but it did nothing.  Ordering you a new plane.  OH BY THE WAY, YOU”VE MISSED YOUR CONNECTING FLIGHT IN CHICAGO AND ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT TO DETRIOT TONIGHT.

Awesome.  They were telling passengers they would just reschedule their entire flight and they could leave Phoenix in the morning.  C and I decided to just hop on this flight and spend the night in Chicago, because that way the longest leg of our trip would already be completed and we would only have a one hour flight in the morning to Detroit.  Which would have worked out great had the airline put our bags on the flight. 

C hopped on the plane to save us seats and I stayed back to ask some questions.  Because I was nice and not extremely rude like I am guessing others were, the airline paid for our hotel in Chicago.  Woo hoo! I don’t think many others got this deal…they had to pay for theirs. Everyone also got a $300 travel credit voucher each, which I have to say made it much more palatable!

When we landed in Chicago Southwest gave us the details of our hotel and we headed there by airport shuttle.  Too bad they gave us the WRONG hotel info!  We had to take the shuttle BACK to the airport and get the correct hotel information.  The customer service rep was so chipper about it too. “Oops sorry!  You are staying at the Hampton Inn not the Residence Inn!” I stayed nice and positive, but by this point it was 11:30pm and I had no clothes and we hadn’t eaten anything but airplane snacks since 11am so that lady was lucky. 

When we finally got to the hotel we ordered an authentic Chicago deep dish pizza, took showers, used up all the mini toiletries the hotel had to offer and crashed out.  Three hours later we were up again for our flight to Detroit....