Rollin' on the Rio

Dear Mom,

Oops. I mean, Hello readers! (same thing, really)

No more rants. I promise. I've got nothing but smiles to report.  OK, that is a complete lie. Promise rescinded. But we are going to start out positive, dagnabbit!  Since my last post, we got back on the Airporter the very next day at exactly the same time.  We checked in with the same United folks at the airport who seemed to have the same troubles with our tickets as they did the previous day. But we remained optimistic and we retraced all of our steps exactly as the day before.  It was deja vu all over again.  But this time they actually let us board the plane! It took off and we were actually on it!  The Houston layover was a breeze, including the stop in the baggage services department and the subsequent and necessary trek back through security afterwards. The flight to Rio was tailwind all the way.  Our luggage showed up without a hitch and we taxied to our apartment to find the Allens waiting for us with open arms and full beer cans.  Let the vacation begin!

The only issue left from our previous ordeal was that we'd only have a day and a half in Rio, with about six days worth of touring planned. But that was no problem for the dynamic duo of Mark and Carol, our built-in travel agents. So after about 10 minutes of acclimation we were out the door and ready to explore.  But I have typed nearly a double figure number of sentences and haven't bitched, moaned or generically complained yet. "Who is this mystery author?," you ask. Surely it cannot be Steve writing this blog or there would have been a snafu pointed out by now.  Something is afoot at the Circle K. Well, you are correct to assume the worst from me.  I do have a complaint. Totally my fault, but still.  Here comes the sob-story of the post. Break out your tiny violins...

Here's a pic to tide you over while you endure my sob story.

As I always do, I packed a spare contact lens case and solution in my checked luggage, but put my normal case and a small bottle of solution in my carry-on.  This way, if I wanted to close my eyes on the plane, I could remove my contacts and have a place to put them. That was on the first day of not-so-much-flying. But then we came back home and I had to remove the case and solution from my pack when I went to bed for the night.  Guess who forgot to repack those things in his carry-on the next day?  So I slept a bit on the plane with my lenses still in my eyes and then suffered the results for the remaining hours leading up to getting to our apartment. I also fell asleep in the taxi on the way to the apartment as I'd only gotten an hour or two of sleep on the plane.

Air quality was poor, so good long distance shots were tough.

No big deal, right? Well, anyone who wears contact lenses knows that when you wake up with your lenses still in your eyes, said lenses are invariably dried out and stuck to your eyeballs.  Usually this is only a minor inconvenience once you can get them out and your eyes will recover within minutes. This time however, not so much.  I think I scratched my right eye when removing the extremely stubborn lens because for the next eight hours I could not open my eye for the pain.  It was virtually oozing tears and was redder than a Stanford campus stop sign.  It was far closer to hospital-begging-level-pain than it was to minor discomfort and I looked like an idiot crying his eyes out on the beach for the rest of the day.  At one point I was put in charge of watching young Josh frolic in the large waves while the other adults walked the beach (the girls were all sitting on the steps ogling volleyball machismos). This arrangement was fine with me because I wasn't going to enjoy the walk in my condition in any case. But it was difficult for me to keep track of him because I had to constantly blot my oozing eye with a sandy towel and I kept losing him amongst the waves in the process.

Understand that I obviously had no contact lenses in, but I couldn't wear eyeglasses because I needed sunglasses due to the unbelievably bright sunlight not agreeing with my ultra-sensitive eyes. So my vision was pretty darn poor without wearing my regular prescription glasses, and tracking Josh was difficult.  I even tried to wear sunglasses over my prescription glasses, preferring over letting my son drown, the only other option of looking even more the idiot on the beach to all the presumably lovely bikini-clad Brazilian women walking by.  I say "presumably" because I never actually saw anyone on the beach, opening my eyes only long enough to spot Josh and then crying, blotting and protecting against sun and sand for the majority of the time. Thankfully, J-Dawg managed to not drown while I not-watched. I'm sure you expected the story to get worse before it got better based on the build-up. But that's all I've got.  Josh nearly got lost trying to find me amongst the thousand of other lounging tourists, as he had drifted down-current, but he never nearly drowned. Disappointing as a climax for the story, but not really disappointing in terms of J-Dawgs general health, I guess...

Ipanema Beach in the late afternoon.

So that was my Rio beach experience.  Apparently everyone else in our eight person group had a blast.  There was much volleyball happening around us, especially the version that people play without their hands (and are still better than I am with them(mine, not theirs, why would I have their hands?)).  And since we as group are all volleyball fans, that provided an excellent source of entertainment for a least an hour.  The kids loved the warm Atlantic waters and the soft sand.  The adults loved the people watching.  I loved my towel but pined for an eye-patch.  I was attempting to remain pleasant company by enjoying humming Antonio Joao Gilberto's iconic tune to myself as I sat there leaking from the orbit on La Playa Ipanema, but for all I know, the girl from the song walked by and all I could say was AAAAAARGH as she did. Not quite the inflection that is called for in the tune.

One more for good measure, with different lighting. No, Josh didn't drown. He was behind the photographer at this point.

We also walked the Copa Cabana beach, which was a bit closer to our apartment, though not as nice, but humming Barry Manilow couldn't quite keep me as happy as the Bossanova did. Once in Copacabana, Carol was on a quest to find an exotic juice she hadn't tried before and after multiple failures we almost made it home fruitless (see what I did there?), but in the end we did find her some Graviola and Cupuacu. Yum.

My eye was healing slowly and by this morning there was not enough pain left to complain. How sad, I mean wonderful, for me. We had spent the evening trying very hard to stay awake until a reasonable hour, lagged via jet as we were, but we failed miserably and fell asleep early and woke late the next morning much more equipped for whirlwind sightseeing. Mark and Carol (travel agent superheroes, remember?) had booked a local tour where we would catch many of the hot spots, each sweeter than the last.  We saw multiple "Favela" neighborhoods, an eye-opening experience to be sure, punn only slightly intended. We walked a bit in the Parque Nacional da Tijuca, the largest mid-urban rainforest in the world. We high-fived Jesus at the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Corcovado. Not certain this should rank as one of the "Seven Wonders of the Modern World" when Angkor Wat doesn't even make the list. But it was pretty sweet. We checked out the old town in Santa Teresa and the party town in Lapa, where we climbed the famous Lapa steps and ate feijoada at a local favorite restaurant.  We took the Swiss-type gondolas up to the summit of Sugar Loaf Mountain to get magnificent views of the city at sunset. The kids got one last dip in the Atlantic back at Ipanema beach.  Not bad for nine hours of daylight.

The Christ the Redeemer Statue was quite impressive. The crowds were crazy.

Again, with the air quality, but still pretty cool.

Now we are back home in our cozy apartment planning tomorrow's trip back to the airport. But I have to mention that Carol and I got one more fantastic Rio experience by catching some live BossaNova music at the bar right next to the bar where the very song I was humming yesterday was written. Without much imagination, that bar was actually named "The Girl From Ipanema Bar". Apparently they don't have live music at the Girl From Ipanema Bar, they just write it there.  So we went next door.  The opening act was so good, I bought his CD. He played many of my favorite Jobim songs including Desafinado, perhaps my all-time favorite.  How nice of my wife to call ahead and make sure the musician played that tune just for me in that random bar that she pretended she hadn't scoped out before-hand.  She even had the forethought to get the tour guide earlier in the day to suggest that particular bar to me. I told you she was a superhero! The featured act was also excellent but we left a little after 11:00 p.m. only a half hour into her set because we had to be up seven hours later to have time to catch our flight and it wasn't a short walk home and darn it, jetlag! I know, I'm a light weight.  At least I am still up typing this silly blog for all three of you...  Mom.

The gondola rides up and down Sugarloaf Mountain were spectacular.

The views from the top were even more so.

Sunset was pretty sweet from up there.

Tomorrow the plane goes wheels up at 7:30 a.m. on our way to Iguazu Falls where we will cross the border to Argentina and then cross back and then cross over one more time, just because we can. Apparently the viewing is better by day on the Argentinian side, but the accommodations at night are better on the Brazilian side.  I am taking Mark's word for it, as the amount of research that I've personally done on the subject has maxed out at none. Next time I write we should have exchanged all of our Reais for Pesos and forgotten all of our "obrigados" in favor of "graciases".  Until then, "Tchau!"

The gang's all here at the Lapa Steps which feature thousands of tiles from all over the world.

We're Back!

Hi everyone. We're back on the road again! Well, sort of. I'm here in my kitchen as I type this. But we had every intention of being halfway to Rio de Janeiro at this very moment. And I think I will blog about the next three weeks of adventure, since I had so much fun doing that on our last big excursion.

So why am I in my kitchen then? I'm glad you asked. But I'm not glad I'm home again. Here's the skinny. But beware, while it is a fascinating story worth your time, it is most definitely a rant...

It all started about a month back when Carol got a cryptic email from Expedia about how our flight itinerary had changed. She called. They politely informed her that our flight to Rio had been rerouted to Sao Paolo.  "Would that be OK?" Uh, no. The two cities are a couple of hundred miles apart! Why would that be OK? So, politely, Carol asked if perhaps we could get a different flight, as a connection from Sao Paolo to Rio seemed out of the question for Expedia.  "Sure, no problem" says the woman from Expedia. They offered one with a 17 hour layover in Mexico City. No deal. "OK, here's one that stops in Denver, then in Miami, then gets to Rio only 14 hours later than your original flight. How would that be?"  NO! says Carol, a little less politely.  Finally, after Carol maintains her cool, but shoots laser beams through her phone to Phoenix, where corporate headquarters for our new favorite travel company resides, the woman gets us a flight on a different airline through Houston with only a three hour layover, and then straight into Rio.  Well done, Carol, once again.  Apparently they only offer the reasonable options if you threaten to get unreasonable with them.  But all is well, we believe, and think very little of it after that.

The big day arrives.  Our friendly neighbor drops us off at the Airporter depot and with little ado the family arrives at SFO before 11:00 a.m. for a 12:45 flight to Houston. We head to the ticket counter. The automatic teller only registers the adult reservations. Apparently there is a problem with the kids' reservation.  Our names pop up, but the kids' names don't.  We calmly wait for a United Airlines representative to help us.  She transfers us to a nice man who seemingly has no problem dealing with these sorts of situations.  Ten minutes later we are back in business, boarding passes in hand, bags checked and gone.  Carol gets to take the express line through security.  The rest of us get to do it the hard way.  The line isn't too bad.  We arrive at the gate with an hour to go before scheduled lift-off.  Carol even gets our seat assignments changed at the gate so that we can sit together as all that was available originally was four scattered seats, since Expedia didn't bother to get us seat assignments when they changed the flight, so we only got them that morning. But things were looking up.  Our seats were now together.  Time to get a burrito before boarding.  Brasilia here we come!

We let everybody board ahead of us.  No reason to choke down the burritos just to sit on the plane for half an hour before take off.  Flight leaves at 12:30.  We approach the gate at 12:10.  Carol's ticket goes through.  My ticket goes through.  Wait, there is a problem with Chloe's ticket.  It doesn't exist.  This is just a boarding pass.  Josh's has the same problem.  "We're sorry, your children cannot board the plane." Say what?!  How could we have been issued boarding passes without a ticket?  The gate counter people type on their computer terminals.  There is nothing they can do.  "We're sorry, but you will have to call Expedia to get this worked out."  But the flight leaves in ten minutes!

The nightmare has only just begun. Expedia won't help us. Our flight leaves without us. Carol is on hold with Expedia.  The United folks tell us that everything is OK. There is another flight to Houston that arrives with enough time for us to catch the Rio flight. It is only half a mile away on the other side of the airport.  It leaves in 90 minutes. That should be sufficient time to get things worked out. "Should be" and reality rarely mesh under these sorts of circumstances, I've found.  Carol is on the phone still.  She begs.  She pleads.  They put her on hold.  She threatens, she chastises.  They put her on hold.  We walk to the new gate with her still on hold.  I call Expedia to complain that Carol has been on hold for over an hour and the next flight is about to leave.  Heads will roll! I get conveniently disconnected.  The new gate employee for United starts to try really hard to get us on the flight.  We offer to pay for new tickets since there are obviously empty seats as we still have a reservation even without tickets.  He can't do it.  Expedia has us locked out somehow.  He gets on the phone with the help desk that only airline employees can access.  Carol is still on the phone, sometimes talking, but mostly on hold.  Nothing gets settled.  The second flight leaves.  There will be no flight to Rio today.

What's more, our luggage is now in Houston without us.  It cannot be sent back to SFO in time for us to pick it up tomorrow and send it on its way again.  It cannot move on internationally without us.  Either we have to fly through Houston to get our bags checked on to Rio, or we can arrive in Rio, and then write up a request for our bags to be sent to us, and they will come within two days.  The problem is that we were only staying three nights in Rio before moving on to other parts of Brazil and South America.  We've lost tonight.  We have only two nights left.  We won't get our bags doing that.

Carol is still on the phone as I type this at 5:45 p.m.  She has either been on hold or talking with them or steaming when they don't call us back after she got disconnected (thrice, now) because now she has to call them back and start the whole discussion again with a new rep.  She lost all of her patience hours ago, but she refuses to let me do the hard work on the phone.  Probably because she knows I will start swearing like a sailor within seconds of asking to be put on hold one more time.

So let us count the problems with this story, shall we?  First Expedia messed up when they changed our original flight (not to forget their complete lack of forthcoming options the first time around when the changes were made - strike one).  They did not reissue the kids tickets.  That is strike two.  Next, they were unwilling to suck it up and tell United they would pay for the seats that we already had reserved and had paid Expedia for, in a timely fashion (twice, as we stood at two different gates, begging and pleading to no avail).  That is strike three and four.  They have had Carol on hold for well over four hours total. Remember this fiasco began at 12:10 when we first learned at the gate that the kids' tickets were not to be found despite the boarding passes in their hot little hands.  Strike five.  But is that it?  No.  What is left of Carol is in the bedroom on the phone still, and it is almost 6:00.  The three times she has been disconnected, nobody bothered to continue working on the problem and nobody bothered to call her back.  They have her phone number.  Heck they have every digit associated with us since birth!  Carol has told them Josh's and Chloe's birthdate over a dozen times at this point!  Strike six? Or is that seven?  Here's the last thing I heard Carol scream into the phone just moments ago:  "NO. NO. NO!  We were not no-shows!  We were at the airport for over four hours today!" I don't think she's making much progress.

And what about United Airlines' part in all of this?  Why is it that two hours before our flight left, when we first discovered that there was a problem with the kids' tickets, did they act as if all was well, and issue us boarding passes.  At that time we theoretically could have called Expedia and actually had time (assuming Expedia reps were both competent and ethically sound, which they are neither) to work things out. United's little oversight made it so that we only discovered the problem 20 minutes before take-off, thereby screwing us for certain.  And why did they take our bags if we had no tickets?  And how do they accept our reservation and issue boarding passes without a ticket in the first place?

What have we lost so far? One of three nights in Rio is gone, along with the money for the house we are renting. Sixty bucks Airporter fees back home and then another sixty bucks back tomorrow, hopefully.  A day of work missed for both of us.  For me it is just wages I would have earned if I worked today and left tomorrow.  But in Carol's case, she had a ton of stuff to do for work that she planned on getting done on the plane, but has done none of since she has been on the phone.  "Get your ass on the phone, and let your wife rest!," you scream.  I know, I keep trying.  She won't have it.  I can't rip the phone from her hands and tell her to take a load off.  She'd skin me alive.

I'm worried we aren't going to be on a plane tomorrow either.  Things aren't progressing in our favor. And our friends are waiting for us in Rio, but they are moving on to our other destinations with or without us.  But I'm even more worried about poor Carol.  She isn't just a trooper.  She's the whole friggin' army brigade.  She'll need more than this vacation to recover from this. Giving up isn't really an option. But she just can't seem to get them to put us on a new set of flights, much less get reparations for all the damage they've done.

Well, rant over. I'll let you know how it turned out. I have to go try to comfort my wife now. She is still on the phone.  It is 6:20.  So that's six hours of hell so far... Wish us luck.