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Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 4:08 pm
by wease
Chris_H_2 wrote:our trip into what surely will be a comedy of errors and half tragedies begins this afternoon. i already noticed that united airlines put the first initial of my middle name on the back of my first name. i know it was them because i looked back at an old boarding pass from january and it showed the same thing. i normally wouldn't care, but i'm worried about security in rome on the way home. so i called united last night, and they said that they would have to reissue the ticket, and it would cost me the difference in the price of the flight now versus what i paid for it back in january (around $3000). i was livid. so my wife called and they said it was their error, they were marking it in my reservation, and if security gave me troubles a united agent would vouch for me. this doesn't portend good things for me.
Chris now looking at real estate listings in Italy…

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 4:46 pm
by doug rr
wease wrote:
Chris_H_2 wrote:our trip into what surely will be a comedy of errors and half tragedies begins this afternoon. i already noticed that united airlines put the first initial of my middle name on the back of my first name. i know it was them because i looked back at an old boarding pass from january and it showed the same thing. i normally wouldn't care, but i'm worried about security in rome on the way home. so i called united last night, and they said that they would have to reissue the ticket, and it would cost me the difference in the price of the flight now versus what i paid for it back in january (around $3000). i was livid. so my wife called and they said it was their error, they were marking it in my reservation, and if security gave me troubles a united agent would vouch for me. this doesn't portend good things for me.
Chris now looking at real estate listings in Italy…
better be move in ready..its impossible to get work done there on time

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 5:04 pm
by bodysnatcher
E.H. Ruddock wrote:
spike wrote:it's cute that you think you can decline.
My wife said if none of the kids go then she wants it to just be her and her mom for a mother daughter trip.
If it's just them 2 then you should go and be a constantly annoying third wheel. Just enthusiastically show up for absolutely everything.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 5:13 pm
by Chris_H_2
doug rr wrote:
wease wrote:
Chris_H_2 wrote:our trip into what surely will be a comedy of errors and half tragedies begins this afternoon. i already noticed that united airlines put the first initial of my middle name on the back of my first name. i know it was them because i looked back at an old boarding pass from january and it showed the same thing. i normally wouldn't care, but i'm worried about security in rome on the way home. so i called united last night, and they said that they would have to reissue the ticket, and it would cost me the difference in the price of the flight now versus what i paid for it back in january (around $3000). i was livid. so my wife called and they said it was their error, they were marking it in my reservation, and if security gave me troubles a united agent would vouch for me. this doesn't portend good things for me.
Chris now looking at real estate listings in Italy…
better be move in ready..its impossible to get work done there on time
my wife would go nuts at their idea of urgency

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 5:14 pm
by Chris_H_2
96583UP wrote:ah fek man that is so annoying

godspeed

when you get to piazza del popolo

think of me

as I did you
i always think of you. but especially will while at santa maria del popolo alone and face to face with two caravaggios.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 6:42 pm
by 96583UP
Chris_H_2 wrote:
96583UP wrote:ah fek man that is so annoying

godspeed

when you get to piazza del popolo

think of me

as I did you
i always think of you. but especially will while at santa maria del popolo alone and face to face with two caravaggios.
YES

also think of me when you order stracciatella gelato, supplì, and pizza bianca w/mortadella

cause these are a few of my favorite things <bursts into song>

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 9:16 pm
by Chris_H_2
Sitting on the plane now. Take off in 30 minutes. And it was an event-filled last 90 minutes. On the way to the airport I got an email saying my reservation for the flight was cancelled. Got to the airport and they said someone in United reservations cancelled everything. I (well, my wife) spent the next 60 minutes just to get our reservation back. Success. But we had no seat assignments, and during that time, someone upgraded to our seats. So we sat and watched 4 people go to the gate to complain that the upgrades that they originally had received were no more. We eventually got our original seats back. And I had to go on the app to reserve the same seats back we originally had. And once we boarded, we were at our seats explaining our story to the flight attendant when some woman walked by, looked at our seats, and said “so you’re the ones that took our seats.”

This trip is doomed.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 9:27 pm
by doug rr
tell them that the pope has room in hell for them..make sure to get the pillowy gnocchi..

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 9:49 pm
by tragabigzanda
Carl Sandburg wrote:There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot's hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Thu March 27, 2025 11:03 pm
by 96583UP
so brutal

godspeed ser

there is amatriciana waiting for you over the rainbow

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 1:41 am
by Higgs
Thoughts and prayers Chris.

What a shit show!

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 1:44 am
by spike
#popecurse

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 2:38 am
by wease
Chris_H_2 wrote:Sitting on the plane now. Take off in 30 minutes. And it was an event-filled last 90 minutes. On the way to the airport I got an email saying my reservation for the flight was cancelled. Got to the airport and they said someone in United reservations cancelled everything. I (well, my wife) spent the next 60 minutes just to get our reservation back. Success. But we had no seat assignments, and during that time, someone upgraded to our seats. So we sat and watched 4 people go to the gate to complain that the upgrades that they originally had received were no more. We eventually got our original seats back. And I had to go on the app to reserve the same seats back we originally had. And once we boarded, we were at our seats explaining our story to the flight attendant when some woman walked by, looked at our seats, and said “so you’re the ones that took our seats.”

This trip is doomed.
First, the pope stays alive. Now this. You know bad things come in threes…

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 4:31 pm
by Chris_H_2
We made it. Our rooms weren’t ready, so we explored a bit. Then went straight to our 2:15 pm Domus Aurea tour. We were 10 minutes in (it was 90 minutes) and I started prairie dogging it. It was so bad that I almost had to cut it short. Problem: this place is underground and consists of a maze of rooms, and so they don’t let you just go off on your own. So I had to stick with it. I was sweating at the end. Thank god it was my second time there, because I couldn’t focus on anything the tour guide said.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 4:49 pm
by 96583UP
wow. classic

glad you survived

god knows i have had man a löffenpinch in my day, but that's a pretty all-star one right there

if it was foro romano tour then you could have just snuck away into the ancient sewer entrance

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 4:52 pm
by doug rr
time for a few slices and some Barolo..
go baseball

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 8:59 pm
by spike
Chris H 2’s life is a sitcom.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 9:22 pm
by dad
I still have nightmares about Italian public restrooms.

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Fri March 28, 2025 11:15 pm
by 96583UP
a lot of espresso ends up in there

Re: Travel thread

Posted: Sat March 29, 2025 12:44 am
by wease
dad wrote:I still have nightmares about Italian public restrooms.
Haha! I was lucky enough to avoid them.

The palace at Versailles has a very nice restroom