There's no free lunch

Yesterday I headed back from Podolny Palooza in Albuquerque after two days of productive meetings and lots to eat. As you might recall, I was flying standby on a buddy pass with Southwest which the very generous Kleveland Kim had given me over the holidays....or maybe my birthday. Anyway, the trip out there was fine, but the trip back posed problems.

The flight I wanted to get on at 3:30 was going from ABQ to Phoenix (PHX), but I missed by two people on the standby list and had to wait until 4:45. The flight from PHX to Chicago was at 5:20 and the plane was supposed to land in PHX at 5, which is cutting it close. "No problem." the attendant told me. And if I didn't get on that flight, there was another at 6:10. No biggee.

After landing in PHX and rushing to the nearby gate where the plane to Chicago was supposed to be, I found out it was moved into a different concourse. With only 10 minutes or so now before the 5:20 flight was supposed to take off, I decided to give it a shot anyway since they usually don't let standbys even know until 10 minutes before the flight takes off whether they are getting on. Much to my enjoyment, they were still boarding the flight when I arrived, but the enjoyment wore off quickly when they told me I wouldn't get on as it was already full and there were many standbys ahead of me.

So I got on the list for the 6:10 flight, only to find out there were about 20+ people ahead of me on that one too. In fact, there were people trying to get on the 6:10 flight who had been trying to fly standby since 4:30 in the morning!! They had been bumped from flight to flight all day!! They were the folks able to get on the 6:10, but I wasn't. So I inquired about what it would cost to BUY a ticket to Chicago.

I was really hoping she would start the sentence with "Two hundred.....".
"Three hundred....". Shit.
"....and eighty five dollars." Double shit.

Well, the ticket WOULD have cost almost $300 if I had bought it originally instead of trying to fly standby, so I was really only going to be out $100. If I stayed in PHX, where I knew no one (Blind Ryan, our softball ex-manager, had recently moved back to Chicago), I was going to have to get a hotel and then come back in the morning and get on the standby list. At first I was comparing the $100+ hotel room to the $400 ticket, but then thought about the cabs, dinner and airport food in the morning (not to mention having to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the airport to get on the standby list). Plus, if people waited all day on a Thursday, who is to say I wouldn't wait all day on a Friday?? So I bit the bullet, bought the ticket and got home around midnight. At least I was home though.

Also on the upside, financially, I'm able to make that decision and not lose sleep over it. AND I finished the Tribune's crossword puzzle on the trip home, which is awesome for me and quite an accomplishment!!