At the point when we missed our flight to Seattle, I had had a busy week at work followed by back-to-back Dead shows on Friday and Saturday nights followed by a 6 a.m. flight to start the Alaska cruise.
But I was packed and ready and dialed in. I generally have no problem getting up before the crack of dawn to catch a flight. You suck it up and do it. I could sleep on the plane and I could definitely sleep on the ship. So I wasn't worried.
What I didn't taken into account was Greg's idea of the proper time to wake up in such a situation.
He had been totally swamped at work, which overflowed into the weekend. He hadn't packed. He was stressed and overwhelmed. So he decided to skip the second Dead show.
The plan was that I would go and get a ride back to his house afterwards. Which I did. I got there at around midnight. He was asleep and, presumably, had set the alarm for a reasonable time.
When the alarm went off, he snoozed it twice. I got up, was dressed in less than 2 minutes, and waited for him.
I didn't have my watch on, so I asked what time he had set the alarm for.
"Four."
"What??? The flight's at six! I've heard security lines have been really bad lately! We need to go!!"
"It'll be fine. When I flew earlier this week there were no lines. Plus we have TSA Pre."
He proceeded to take a shower and perform his morning toilette at a leisurely pace while I became more and more anxious.
We didn't leave the house until around 4:45. There wasn't enough time to park in the satellite parking and take the shuttle, so we parked in the regular lot and had to schlep our bags to the terminal.
By the time we got to the check-in desk, it was 5:20.
The very nice gentleman informed us that it was too late to check our bags, but we could take them through security and check them at the gate.
We went to the north security area, which is only available for people with TSA Pre. But when we got there, we realized that TSA Pre was not indicated on our boarding passes, so we would have to go to the south security area on the opposite side of the extremely large airport.
At south security, the lines were so long that they were starting to wrap around the building. My heart sank.
"Didn't you put in our Pre information when you bought the tickets?" he demanded.
"I thought I did."
"Well, then they should be on the tickets."
I bit my tongue.
There was no way we were going to make the flight. We decided that he would continue to wait in line and I would go back to the check-in desk and see if there was a later flight that would work.
The very nice gentleman assured me that there was.
"I can get you on the 8:15 flight that gets into Seattle at 10:45."
"That's perfect," I said. We weren't scheduled to board the ship until 1:30.
"I don't think I'll be able to get you seats together, though."
"That is absolutely not a problem for me."
So we got new boarding passes. I made sure that our Pre information was on them.
"See, I told you everything would work out!" he said.
"I need you to not talk to me for 10 minutes. After that I'll be fine."
"We were here at the time that I anticipated. If our boarding passes had had our Pre information, we would have made the flight."
I turned to him. "I thought I had put in the information when I bought the tickets. Sometimes it doesn't transfer. But if I did forget, it was an oversight, and I am truly sorry for the error. But whether the Pre information was in there or not shouldn't be the difference between making the flight and missing it."
But it was fine. We sailed through security, had time to get something to eat, went to our gate, and made it to Seattle with plenty of time to board the ship.
We initially planned to have a little bit of time to hang out in Seattle beforehand, but we had paid for the airport transfer to the boat, plus didn't have as much time because of the later flight, so we figured we would just head to the docks and try to get on board a little early.
Greg said, "I've always thought that I should keep tickets like this on hand so you can use them in any ticket situation. You can buy rolls of them on Amazon."
"That is an excellent idea," I agreed.
Apparently the buses were running a little late, so people were waiting around for their ticket color to be announced. It seemed like a disorganized process.
There was a bus loading up nearby. I think it was for the yellow tickets, but it didn't seem like anyone was really checking.
"Let's just get on that one," Greg said.
"Sounds good." I've found that if you move through the world with confidence and act like you're supposed to be wherever you are, you will rarely be questioned.
So we nonchalantly strolled onto the bus and found seats.
After the bus left, we chatted with the folks we were sitting with. Everyone was excited for a relaxing vacation.
I looked out the window. Having never travelled from SeaTac airport to the cruise terminal, I was unfamiliar with the route.
Greg has taken cruises out of Seattle and presumably knew where we were supposed to be going.
After about 10 minutes, he said, "I sure hope this isn't the bus to Vancouver."
I could only laugh.
