The Custer Travel Curse isn’t really a thing, but it lives in family lore, so much so that even friends know about it. And boy did it strike hard this month.
It was July 20. The girl in front of me nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot every twenty seconds, her eyes glued to the phone in her hand. First-time flier? I wondered internally as I watched her shuffle her bags up to the ticket counter. I glanced at my own phone again. Colorado Springs to Minneapolis: On Time. I don’t know what possessed me to hit refresh at the very moment the nervous girl turned around from the counter to shout back at her friend, “Liv, it’s canceled!” Surely that’s a different flight than mine, I told myself before looking back at the device in my hands. Colorado Springs to Minneapolis: Canceled. And thus began a 72-hour saga.
By now the Global IT Tech Outage of July 19 was pretty common news, but I had thought, even believed, that I was safe a whole day later. I’d checked and rechecked my email and flightaware a thousand times before leaving the house and even during the drive. Yet here I was. And honestly, I realized I didn’t have it so bad. It wasn’t like this was my flight back to Europe, nor did I have any major commitments over the weekend. Everyone I was supposed to meet up with would graciously understand and reschedule, and Colorado Springs held family. What a gift to have another day with them, I thought.
I left the airport a short while later with a rebooking for 48 hours later, July 22, out of Denver. Perfect. All I had to do was enjoy a lovely Sunday with the family, which included visiting nieces from Hawaii as well as a whole bunch of WorldVenture friends, so I did.
July 22 rolled around bright and early, and this time the airline was more on top of it. I opened up my email. Denver to Minneapolis: Canceled. Fighting the urge to groan loudly, I bounded up the stairs to borrow a US phone, so that Dad and I could spend the entire drive to the Denver airport listening to the hold music. Since I never got a hold of anyone, I sought out an airline agent instead and surprisingly only waited in line for an hour, making friends in the process. The couple in line behind me were real estate agents from upstate New York who’d been trying to get home since July 19. “Oh well,” the wife smiled, “it’s part of the price we pay for convenience.”
All flights to Minneapolis were already overbooked for the day, so I left the airport with a ticket in hand for the next morning, July 23, and Dad helped book me into a really nice airport hotel running a Monday deal. After a nice long walk to Walmart and back, I relaxed with a Bill Bryson book and watched some TV before an early bedtime.
July 23 started even earlier than the previous day, probably because my body was starting to show signs of stress. I yanked the phone toward me and blinked to see an email from the airline. My heart sank, but then felt immediate relief: it was NOT canceled, just delayed. Which is a praise because when I went downstairs just before 7:00 to catch the shuttle, parking myself directly next to it, the driver came out, jumped in, and drove away without asking me a single question. Apparently you check in for the shuttle inside the hotel.
I did make it to the airport eventually, and 2 more delays plus 1 gate change later, I found myself suddenly face to face with Kelly, a former BFA colleague! She had also gone through two flight cancellations, an airport change, and a slew of restless nights to be scheduled not just on my flight, but seated in the row behind me. What a small, crazy world. Exactly 72 hours later than when I was initially supposed to arrive in Minneapolis, we landed. Several people on the plane cheered, myself included. Take that, Custer Travel Curse.
