I’m sitting in SFO’s International Terminal’s United Lounge. I have no clue as to what time my flight is actually going to take off. Whether or not I will be able to make my connections in Copenhagen that will get me to Scotland. Or what happened to the improved food that United sported for a a few months.
Let us look at the last item first. For a while, United offered nothing other than prepacked cheese&crackers augmented with the occasional bag of scrubbed mini-carrots. Then either they saw the light or were hassled enough by their international partners to meet a reasonable Star Alliance Standard. Hummus, chips, salsas, dips and decent soups became the norm. We now have bread, mini corn chips, diced tomatoes and some kind of multi bean salad. The soup is a heavy, salty cream mushroom. The alternative is pork sausages. Which, if you ate such things would probably be viewed with a bit of worry as they are shriveled and a rather strange color.
I am interested in the food since I traveled to the airport with George. His flight was before 1500. My was scheduled for 1730. Note the use of the word was. I failed to find my flight on the departure boards, but since SAS had an auto kiosk I was able to easily obtain a boarding pass which informed me that the flight was scheduled for 1735 and boarding was 1920. No departure gate was noted. Ok, the decision to have only carry on took about an instant. Wait out here till four hours before whenever? Or go to the lounge and interrupt George as he checked his emails and read the paper?
Answer to that one is obvious. What wasn’t obvious was a very tiny crochet hook tucked into my suitcase which was picked up on the scanner. Spent about 15 minutes hanging around while the guys took everything out and finally found their concerning piece of metal. At this point I had completely lost track of George who just assumed I had gone ahead of him to the lounge (we will not mention calling his name as he wandered past me in the security screening area).
He left for his flight (he is on Lufthansa through Frankfurt – the return leg of our December trip. Mine was the return leg from a previous trip. He then takes something with a change and should make both Glasgow and the hotel early evening. He booked me on SAS since our tour ends in Copenhagen. I am seriously glad I had about five hours between my arrival and my Brussels Airlines trip to Scotland. Never mind I don’t see a hotel bed till after midnight.
Somewhere in this long tale I may have forgotten to tell you that I downloaded the SAS app to find that I don’t have a departing flight. Well, it is listed but at the original time. However, the inbound flight isn’t scheduled to land till after 1820 (from 1445). Anyway I look at it, I have lost at least three and probably four hours of my available transfer time between flights in Copenhagen. This is not good. I just verified that I am on the latest flight out since a plane change is required. SAS flights don’t work – they are all earlier. Lufthansa only has one flight in the morning – and it is more costly than most of the hotel rooms in Copenhagen that I didn’t book.
I guess I am going to let SAS sort it out if I miss my connection – they can get me there and find me a place to sleep…
and then I moved on to something even more important. I have better than a dozen USB cables at home. Somehow I managed (for only the second time in my life) to pack the cable bag without one. So here I am, lovely camera and lenses and no way to download pictures. Come to find out, there isn’t a location in the airport that has the traditional USB-non-micro connector cable. Go figure – if I wanted a selfie-stick, everyone carries them. Or a lightening cable – every vending machine has them. But a USB-camera connection? Nah.
What else is going to happen today? A surprise in the California Primary?
Nah.
