Avoiding Being Trapped in Texas

This morning I was cleaning out my inbox and getting my calendar in order. I was entering my flight information for my trip to San Diego into my calendar when I saw that my flight into Houston arrived about half an hour AFTER my connection left Houston.

I started by calling Travelocity, since they were the ones that issued the tickets (and the ones that sent me the email of the "your flights have changed; here are your new flights" sort which caused this problem). However, after navigating their phone tree and choosing the least-bad option each time I ended up connected to an operator with an accent and whose microphone was set to the lowest setting. With my phone volume turned all the way up, I couldn't hear him. When I turned my phone to speakerphone and put my ear by the speaker, I still couldn't understand him.

Note to self: This sort of shit always happens when you use Travelocity. Stop using Travelocity.

So then I called the airline. The agent scolded me for not calling earlier. The agent whined that the travel agent should have fixed this. I apologized, even though I'm not sure why. Then, since the first part of my ticket is on a different airline, I had to be put on hold for about ten minutes because this airline couldn't change my ticket without permission of the other airline. This never would have happened if I'd booked my flight on Aeroflot. In Soviet Russia, airline tickets you!

And so it has been decided by the whims of the airlines: I shall leave San Diego fairly early on Tuesday the 8th. Assuming that the other parts of my travel plans don't self-destruct, I'll be arriving in the early afternoon on Saturday the 5th. In theory I should be going to some math talks on Sunday, but we'll see how that goes.

This time I actually registered for the meeting, so I will not need to photoshop a forged badge. (I'm joking! I don't even have photoshop on my computer!) However, if you're the sort of person whose name is always mis-spelled by the AMS, I can tell you how I would make my own badge to replace the one that they made.