I take off work the day before departure to make sure I pack everything.  I have a hard time fitting my pack and all gear into a single duffel, so I decide to leave a few optional items behind.  What a great plan, travel light!!!  I’m going to be on one mountain for 18 days and several days on another.  I have one book, no other entertainment and no backup food besides some bars and gels for summit night and a few snacks.  Instead of flexibility of gear, I am already limiting myself to what I believe will be what I need on the mountain.  I consider myself a genius for getting it all in a single checked bag.  As usual, I pack all my cold weather gear in my carry-on.

 

The taxi driver picks me up.  We have a pleasant conversation on the way to the airport because we both have African Grey Parrots.  However, the ride itself is jerky as the driver hits the gas, then the brake, then the gas, then the brake the whole way to the airport even on the highway.  My neck hurts as I enter the terminal.

 

I carry my gear to the self check-in.  It has no record of my itinerary.  No problem, I’ll enter the Delta confirmation number…nope.  Let me try my name…nada.  OK, I’ll try my credit card, nah ahhhh.  It’ll accept my passport number, no dice.  I try to get the attention of an attendant; they direct me to the check in line.  10 minutes wasted.  No problem, I got here plenty early.  So I wait, and I wait, and I wait for 45 minutes.  Then the line director (I don’t know what else you would call them) tells me the line is extremely slow because everyone is booking tickets and to go to the self check-in.  I tell her what happened and she says to try again and if it doesn’t work to talk to one of the service personnel.  When it doesn’t work (again) it takes 10 minutes to get someone to help.  I hand her my e-ticket for which they had flight changes only just the previous week.  She uses it to lookup my itinerary but finds nothing.  Really, are you kidding me?  You can’t make this stuff up.  It takes her 25 minutes to find my itinerary.  She gives me a ticket that says “boarding pass request” and says, “This will get you past security and you need to check in at the gate to get your boarding pass.  Since this is Dulles you need to get going now to get through security and out on the shuttles to the gate”.  I ask about my bag to check, she goes back to her computer and after another 10 minutes prints out a back check and gives me the receipt.  I see that it says that the final destination is Santiago, Chile.  I tell her “My final destination is Mendoza, Argentina.”  She says, “I’ll take care of it, you need to get going to the gate”.

 

I zip through security without a problem.  There is no shuttle so I sit down on a bench and give a quick call to Sunn to tell her what is going on and that I’ll call her back after I have an actual ticket.

 

The shuttle comes and I grab my carry-on pack and get on the shuttle.  The doors close and off we go.  That’s when I realize that my cell phone is not in my pocket; Or in my hand; Or in my jacket; Or in my pack.  I don’t have my cell phone.  So I get to the terminal, exit the shuttle, get on the other shuttle whose doors are just closing.  We go back to the main terminal and I go over to the bench I was sitting on and my phone isn’t there.  I ask a few people who didn’t see it.  A security agent sees me searching and says that someone turned in a phone a few minutes before and directs me to the security coordinator.  The security coordinator asks me to describe the phone (iPhone with thin leather slide cover) then takes me to a locked safe, opens it and gives me my phone.  Back to the shuttle to the terminal.  Things are going swimmingly.

 

I wait in line at the gate and they have a ticket printed for me.  I ask if they corrected my checked bag, she says she has no way of knowing but to check in Chile to make sure my bag goes through.

 

I have a short flight to Atlanta, a long layover with Mexican food and margaritas, followed by a nice relaxing long flight to Santiago, Chile.  The flight is so long, we arrive on the next day.