Everything Going Wrong in One Day

I woke up early this morning thinking that everything would work today and fall into place. That was probably my first mistake of many that lead to today's events. I took a shower, packed, and got ready to check out. I was planning on surfing in the morning before returning my rental car in and then getting the hell out of town to the airport. The parking garage where I parked my car over night was still closed. It was suppose to be open at 0800 on Saturdays. Me standing in front of entrance at 0845 for 15 minutes really didn't change much at all. As I was starting to get trully annoyed the doors finally opened and the ticket booth finally got staffed. I paid my ticket, loaded the car, and headed to New Brighton to squeeze in a surf session.

The waves were shitty. For those of you that don't know anything about surfing, the best kind of waves are those met with an offshore wind. They create the perfect geometry in the Kodak Moment Picturesque waves in the Surfer Magazine photos most people think about when they think surfing. Because of storms around the South Island of New Zealand, the swells were huge. Good and not good at the same time. Good in the fact that if you can catch the waves, you're in for a hell of a ride. Bad in the fact that I just bought this surfboard and I have to get use to the balance of the board and it's overall performance. Anyways, after getting thrashed around for a couple hours, I drove to Hotel So to stage my baggage in a safe and monitored place while I returned my car a few blocks away. I dropped off my car and explained how my tire got popped only to find out that they were charging me $90 to replace the tire. Dammit. $90 poorer, I walked back to the So. It didn't dawn on me until I started to call for shuttles that I might want to check to see if any of the shuttles had the ability to carry an 8 foot surfboard. To make a long story short, 30 to 45 minutes later I ended up hiring a taxi van to take just little old me and my surfboard to the airport.

Because of the whole surfboard debacle, I was thinking that I was running late for my flight. I made it into the airport only to get stuck behind an entire field hockey team checking in for the same flight I was on. If there ever was a punishment for thinking that everything would go as planned today, this was it. After 25 minutes of listening to 30 some 30 or 40 year old women banter back and forth, I made it to the counter to check in for my flight. I then made it to the security gate only to find out that my flight was delayed by 2 hours. Great! Plenty of time to get lunch and just relax. 2 hours go by and our plane is delayed for another 2 hours. Knowing that my flight to Rarotonga wasn't a connecting flight, this worried me...a lot. I almost missed my flight flying from Auckland to Christchurch because I had to take my baggage from one terminal to another, check in there, and take my skis over to the over sized check-in counter. There were about 30 of us that were flying to Rarotonga and I was the only asshole that couldn't get a connecting flight (a good reason for that to. I was flying from Christchurch to Rarotonga but I was flying back only to Auckland so I could catch my flight home...it was cheaper to buy the round trip ticket from Auckland to Raro and by the one way from Christchurch to Auckland). Our flight left at 1800 with our Rarotonga flight leaving Auckland at 1915. Despite how many times we asked no one could give us a straight answer as to what the hell was going to happen once we got into Auckland. When we sat down in Auckland (at 1915 mind you) we were told that our plane to Raro hadn't even landed yet. Sweet! Plenty of time to make it over to the International Terminal and check in (The Domestic and International terminals at Auckland International Airport are separated by a 10-15 minute walk). With the way things were going today, it didn't surprise me to see that my flight was already making it's final boarding call as I was walking into the terminal. The best part was the check-in counter was closed. And of course, following along the suit of today's events, the second I even found the counter they were done boarding the plane. Fuck. Luckily, the Pacific Blue customer service desk wasn't too far away. Unluckily, they had closed....for several hours. Being very use to shit going horribly wrong for me, I called Pacific Blue and explained to them everything that has happened. Luckily, they put me on a flight on Sunday. The only down fall would be that my flight lands in Raro on 0010 Monday morning and it takes off at 0155 Tuesday Morning. It sucks....but it's better than nothing. So now, here I sit in a hotel in Auckland (after a $70 NZD taxi fare) writing in my blog when I could be looking forward to setting down somewhere in the South Pacific. What did I learn from all of this you say?

1) If you have over sized luggage, make sure your shuttle or taxi can transport it. Do this early on!

2) Scope out the lines at the check in counters before you commit. If there's an entire field hockey team in front of you figure out if they've got their tickets and whether or not if they're in the line to check in their baggage only or if they're trying to check-in for their tickets as well. This will save you a lot of time (25 minutes in my case).

3) Print out your itinerary...or leave a PDF copy on your phone or PDA. If you print it out and that field hockey team is in the full check-in line, you'd be amazed how big your smile can be as you walk past 40 people straight up to the counter to check your baggage.

4) When booking flights, if you're going to do something funky like fly from one airport to your destination only to return to one of your layovers, call the airlines and let them know this so that your entire journey is one connecting flight. This will allow your baggage to go from flight to flight without having to run damn near a mile in between terminals.

I'm sure this is common sense for a lot of you out there but for a beginning traveler, there's no better way to learn things than the hard way...