Trip to Palm Springs (Part 2 & 3)
Part 2
The trip to Palm Springs failed miserably the first go round and the next day did not go exactly as planned. We arrived at the airport in Gulfport at 4:30am. We were told to arrive at that time by the Continental counter people the night before b/c the airport has a tendency to get crowded on Monday mornings. So, we arrived a 4:30am, checked in quickly (no line) and proceed up to security....which is closed until 5am. The continental people really won a lot of our love back by asking us to arrive at a time in which we wouldn't be able to even go through security to the gate. BOO! HISS!
The 6am flight we caught that morning was delayed 45 minutes, but we did manage to not only taxi away from the gate, but we actually took off on that try. We arrived at Houston in plenty of time to catch our connection, but once we got there, one of the guys realized that he was booked on a flight to Palm Springs that didn't leave until 5pm. He was able to get it changed to the flight we were on to San Diego and that flight took off at the scheduled time.
We get to San Diego as scheduled, but we still need to collect our luggage, pick up the rental car and drive the 2 or so hours to Palm Springs. Eric's luggage didn't show up on that flight b/c although they had changed his flight to match ours, they never got the luggage to the right place to get it on our flight. It came into Palm Springs late that night.
We head to the car rental place and find out that they have lost our reservations. Fortunately, they had a SUV that we could use and we headed to Palm Springs. If any of ya'll have traveled near San Bernidido, you may have seen the thousands of windmills that they have out there. It proved to be rather distracting b/c we managed to completely miss some item (we think it was a muffler) laying in the middle of the road. When we hit the thing, it ripped apart under the car and knocked the back bumper partially off the car and punctured a hole in the bumper.
Part 3
We finally got to Palm Springs and I had enough time to check in, take the golf cart to my room (out in East Hell) and run back to the main hall to attend a new hire orientation.
Needless to say, we all slept well that night.
The resort was really nice and we all enjoyed the conference. Dan and I gave our presentation on Wednesday and it went really well. Everyone seemed really impressed with us and we got a lot of compliments on it. Dan and I also got grief the entire week about our age. Both of us and the other intern (Andrew) were the youngest people there and there were a lot of jokes about carding us.
The trip was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be back home (or hotel) in Gautier. Our trip back started a little rocky (some tickets were messed up and they had my manager on a flight to Washington) but didn't get really rough until the flight from Houston to Gulfport. I had a guy sitting behind me that NEVER stopped talking. Since we were on a puddle jumper, he had to talk VERY loud to get his voice over the sound of the engines....I was tired, grumpy and ready to scream by the time we started our approach to Gulfport. For some reason, it seemed like it was taking a really long time to make the approach. Then the captain came on and told us that due to bad weather sitting over the airport, we were going to have to circle for a little while....20 minutes later, he told us that we were going to head to Mobile to re-fuel.
AHHHH!
We de-planed and asked for our luggage, deciding to rent a car and drive the 40 minutes to Gulfport from Mobile. We get to the car rental counters at the airport and are told that there are no cars for us to rent unless we have a reservation.
AHHHH!!!
So, we took a taxi back to Gulfport, picked up our cars and drove back to our respective towns.
It is SOOO good to be back.
The trip to Palm Springs failed miserably the first go round and the next day did not go exactly as planned. We arrived at the airport in Gulfport at 4:30am. We were told to arrive at that time by the Continental counter people the night before b/c the airport has a tendency to get crowded on Monday mornings. So, we arrived a 4:30am, checked in quickly (no line) and proceed up to security....which is closed until 5am. The continental people really won a lot of our love back by asking us to arrive at a time in which we wouldn't be able to even go through security to the gate. BOO! HISS!
The 6am flight we caught that morning was delayed 45 minutes, but we did manage to not only taxi away from the gate, but we actually took off on that try. We arrived at Houston in plenty of time to catch our connection, but once we got there, one of the guys realized that he was booked on a flight to Palm Springs that didn't leave until 5pm. He was able to get it changed to the flight we were on to San Diego and that flight took off at the scheduled time.
We get to San Diego as scheduled, but we still need to collect our luggage, pick up the rental car and drive the 2 or so hours to Palm Springs. Eric's luggage didn't show up on that flight b/c although they had changed his flight to match ours, they never got the luggage to the right place to get it on our flight. It came into Palm Springs late that night.
We head to the car rental place and find out that they have lost our reservations. Fortunately, they had a SUV that we could use and we headed to Palm Springs. If any of ya'll have traveled near San Bernidido, you may have seen the thousands of windmills that they have out there. It proved to be rather distracting b/c we managed to completely miss some item (we think it was a muffler) laying in the middle of the road. When we hit the thing, it ripped apart under the car and knocked the back bumper partially off the car and punctured a hole in the bumper.
Part 3
We finally got to Palm Springs and I had enough time to check in, take the golf cart to my room (out in East Hell) and run back to the main hall to attend a new hire orientation.
Needless to say, we all slept well that night.
The resort was really nice and we all enjoyed the conference. Dan and I gave our presentation on Wednesday and it went really well. Everyone seemed really impressed with us and we got a lot of compliments on it. Dan and I also got grief the entire week about our age. Both of us and the other intern (Andrew) were the youngest people there and there were a lot of jokes about carding us.
The trip was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be back home (or hotel) in Gautier. Our trip back started a little rocky (some tickets were messed up and they had my manager on a flight to Washington) but didn't get really rough until the flight from Houston to Gulfport. I had a guy sitting behind me that NEVER stopped talking. Since we were on a puddle jumper, he had to talk VERY loud to get his voice over the sound of the engines....I was tired, grumpy and ready to scream by the time we started our approach to Gulfport. For some reason, it seemed like it was taking a really long time to make the approach. Then the captain came on and told us that due to bad weather sitting over the airport, we were going to have to circle for a little while....20 minutes later, he told us that we were going to head to Mobile to re-fuel.
AHHHH!
We de-planed and asked for our luggage, deciding to rent a car and drive the 40 minutes to Gulfport from Mobile. We get to the car rental counters at the airport and are told that there are no cars for us to rent unless we have a reservation.
AHHHH!!!
So, we took a taxi back to Gulfport, picked up our cars and drove back to our respective towns.
It is SOOO good to be back.
2 Comments:
(Mary) Well, look on the bright side, at least you got to ride a golf cart.
But seriously, I'm glad that your presentation went well, and I'm sure that it'll be a VERY long time before you travel anywhere ever again.
I actually manage to earn a lot of overtime during the trip, so I have some money buring a hole in my pocket...no plans yet, but i'm sure i'll be flying somewhere.
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