Last week I spent a few days in Toronto, Canada. The trip for the most part went well with a few minor hiccups but nothing too bad. That all changed when we started on our way back to Portland. It all started on Thursday night when we took the bus to the airport. The hotel concierge who we bought our bus ticket from told us the wrong terminal. When we got the the airport we had to take the sky train to a completely different terminal in order to check in to our flight. While checking in for our 9:00pm flight to Las Vegas, I had to jump out of the customs line a few times to get all my paper work in order. All was seeming fine until our plane pushed away from the gate and the parking brake on the plane got stuck. After an hour of trying to fix it they finally got it unstuck and pulled the plane back into the gate and we all deboarded the plane. After another hour and a half of trying to fix the problem the finally officially canceled the flight. Now that the flight was canceled we could rebook flights for the next day. Since our tickets were officially used we could not call the airline and rebook by phone and still get our flight for free. The there were not enough gate agents to process all of the passengers quickly. We ended up in the line of the agent that did not really know what he was doing. I think he was actually a sky bridge operator. After waiting in line for another hour we finally rebooked a flight on a different airline for the next morning that would get us back into Portland an hour and fifteen minutes before our 2:00pm white coat ceremony. Just enough time to go from the airport to OHSU on the opposite side of Portland. We were issued a hotel voucher and shuttle voucher. By the time we got the the airport hotel and to bed it was 2:30 in the morning. We got up a 3:45 am so we could get to the airport by 5am for our 6:30 flight to Chicago. Before we left the hotel we threw out anything that was unapproved by TSA for carry on. I had to leave my favorite Swiss Army pocket knife that my grandfather gave me when I was eight with the hotel so they could mail it to me. When we got tot the airport at 4:45am we tried to check in for our flights. We found out that we had not been confirmed the night before by the gate agent on our flight from Chicago to Portland. All that was left was standby seats. We decided that in all we could do was try to fly standby if we wanted to make to Portland for the white coat ceremony. They offered to send us through Dallas but we would have missed the ceremony by about and hour. After we checked in we got in the customs line. It turns out that Customs computer system went down and the line was a mile long. They did not have enough agents to deal with the down computers. It took us nearly an hour to get through customs. My friend dan who I was traveling with me got through Customs and TSA first. He went to the gate to find out that they had delayed our flight because of Customs. He got to talking with the gate agent and she was able to take him off the standby list and overbook him on the Chicago to Portland flight. She could not do the same with me because she can only overbook so many spots. If she tried with me and it did not work I would loose my spot on the standby list. I had a very early time on the stanby list which is how priority is determined. We had a good flight from Toronto to Chicago. We made friends with the flight attendant because it was a very small plane and we were nearly the only ones in it. When we landed in Chicago the flight attendant checked the Chicago to PDX flight and found out that there were seven open seats and that I was number seven on on the stanby list. When we found this out we still had three hours before the flight. It was nerve racking because anyone with American Airlines points could get on the standby list and take priority over me who is not affiliated with American Airlines. After sweating it out in Chicago for three hours, they called my name and I got the last standby seat on the plane. What a relief. I called my mother who was already on the road driving from Ashland to Portland to let her know that I was going to make it. I aslo called the student affairas office to let them know that we were going to make but just in time. Now Chicago O'Hare being Chicago O'Hare our flight took of 30 minutes late due to traffic on the runways. The pilot made up a little time in the air. We arrived at PDX and Dan's parents were there to pick us up as we did not have time to go get his car out of long term parking. We were already wearing our suits from the early morning. Leaving the airport there was road construction on airport road and and also early Friday afternoon freeway traffic. We arrived at the white coat ceremony at 1:45 in time to line up for a 2:00pm start time.
This was the craziest travel story that I have ever had. By the time I got to bed that night I had about 4 hours of interspersed sleep in a 36 hour period. I was exhausted and way behind in school from missing several days.
