SPLAT!

That would be the noise made by the first day of our trip. Let's just say things didn't go smoothly. The car service didn't show up and they didn't call to tell us that the driver hadn't shown up for work, so we had to jump in the car and dash to the airport. We got there in plenty of time, especially since the flight was delayed by 20 minutes or so. I was kind of nervous, because we had a connection to make in Chicago (we were going via Tokyo to Beijing), but 20 minutes was no problem.

The flight got in more like 30 minutes late, and then there was a long line to take off. Finally, we get to Chicago 15 minutes before the flight to Tokyo. I was relieved to see that our flight was at the gate right next to the Japan flight, and I could see them loading baggage as we pulled up. We dash off the plane and the rudest gate agent in the entire world barks at us, "Sorry, you missed your flight." I say, but it's right there, pointing at the plane. "Sorry, your luggage won't make it. You need to rebook." It's actually boring to recount this now, but we're stuck in Chicago for a day, and we couldn't get our luggage to change clothes because (here comes the punchline) our bags are on our flight to Japan.

We spent most of the early afternoon trudging around the airport, and finally got a shuttle bus to the serviceable hotel that American Airlines put us up in. They gave us food vouchers too! Get this, $10 for lunch for 2 people! Wow! Almost enough for McDonalds, or coffee and a muffin at Starbucks. Anyway, we napped at the hotel and now we'll get some dinner and buy a toothbrush and such. Then we go back and do it again tomorrow.

Every trip has lousy stuff happen, but on the first day? This is the worst. The hardest thing after stuff like this happens is to not spend the day going over what happened and what you might have been able to do to prevent it. Should we have been more insistent with the obnoxious gate agent? Maybe. It's always worth the time to try to learn from what happens to you every day, but it's seldom worth the time to keep returning to the same painful moments and beating yourself up about it. We're a day late and it sucks, but that's the end of it. And tomorrow something else will happen.