Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.....

There’s a saying .... the best laid plans of mice and men ... not really sure where it came from and I’m too lazy to Google.... but I think it has to do with things going horribly wrong with plans best laid. I can’t speak for the mice ... on the whole they seem like fairly unexcitable creatures. I suppose if you move their cheese.... well yes it’s a problem because their eyesight is bad ..... hence the song ‘Three Blind Mice’ .... but as their sense of smell is heightened to compensate they will eventually sniff around and find the new location... problem solved. Men however.... their plans are usually more complicated than cheese which brings me to mine. #theresabookaboutit #stopfarmwifeviolence

It all started with this...

We were supposed to leave today on a 5:55 pm British Airways flight to London Heathrow. We packed, we said goodbye to the cats, we left the house looking forward to spending leisurely time in the BA Lounge sipping a libation, snacking on crudite and warm chocolate chip cookies while relaxing before our flight. That all changed when I happened to check the BA app for an arrival time and I find this cryptic message. Keep in mind up this point there has been no text, no email, no carrier pigeon, no smoke signals in the sky to let us know something has gone terribly amiss in our travel departure.

Ok what does this mean ... well a few things... First ... the departure time made a rapid descent from 5:55 to10:55. Nothing involving descending rapidly with planes is ever a good thing. Second ... there’s the mysterious message ‘If we haven’t contacted you please check in and make sure you are at the airport in time for your original scheduled flight.‘ Third ... we have another flight to Paris from Heathrow that we will no longer be able to make. None of these things make me happy.

Calling the airline does nothing to steer me back to the path of happiness. They offered us a flight on American Airlines that would allow us to make our flight to Paris but would not change the Paris flight without a charge if we decided to stay with BA. I have to interject here the only reason we fly BA is for the experience. It’s the only reason we have the British Airways credit card, the only reason we pay the yearly fee to have it, the only reason we put everything we possibly can on it ...and all of this is to accrue enough miles to fly first class. Why? Because we have become spoiled rotten little brats and we like our warm cashews and free pajamas. #dontjudgeus #itsmypartyandillflyBAifiwantto

So we arrive at the airport hopeful in our quest to speak to a BA representative. Kinda like the Wizard of Oz except we are asking for something far simpler than a heart or a brain.... like Dorothy we want nothing more than to arrive at a destination of our choosing in a timely pampered fashion with free snacks and warm hand towels. It’s not to much to ask except the Wizard isn’t home.... Merde! (Thats french for poop.) After much wandering, not unlike the Oz posse, we find ourselves staring at empty check-in counters with screens that say say DFW on them.... not British Airways.... but we are assured this is where the mythical yellow brick road is leading us. Again the parallels to this story are uncanny... the rude man behind the curtain (in our case figuratively) also tells us to go away .... since the flight is delayed they will not be showing up until 2 hours before.... which happens to be 8pm .... since our modern time pieces are showing 2:30pm we are left wondering what we are going to do for almost 6 hours stuck outside the Emerald City walls. At this point we have no other alternative than to settle into uncomfortable chairs (like sad munchkins who have just been told the lollipop gang will not be performing) to wait for the obnoxious wizard who summoned us for an appointment without the same courtesy of being in residence. Oh the irony ... or perhaps not irony just whatever it is that Alanis Morrisette song actually was about instead of....(insert thinking emoji here) In either case it sucked. #damnwizards #whowouldhavethought #itfigures

We are now beginning to wonder if we have stumbled into some alternative universe where BA doesn’t actually exist. Was it all really a dream? Lacking flying monkeys to do our dirty work we were forced to wait and as the saying goes we were eventually rewarded with a sign .... yes literally a sign.....

I won’t bore you with all the details of how our crazy fairy tale derailed so badly it was almost unrecognizable but I will share it involved a change the flights time .... not just todays all the days.... Because we booked our flight a year ago, which you have to if you want to fly First using air miles (fodder for another post so I won’t delve into it) the original flight was departing at at 5:55 pm. Theres only one BA flight leaving DFW for London a day and it’s 5:55. But apparently it was changed to 9:55 pm at some point after we booked but no one told us. Then add to that a delay and you have most of the riddle solved that had us wishing for a pair of ruby slippers to take us back home to sanity and cats.

So as with all good fairy tales there is a happy ending ... we finally made it to the Emerald city under the guise of the Flagship Lounge. #promisedland

We still have hours to wait before we fly and a few dragons to slay when we land but..... There’s no place like first .... there’s no place like first .... #shallowbuthumble #donthateus #ifheavenwereanairline

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