Floss religiously

A very UnMurphy Murphy vacation

Part 1 of 3

We got back late last night from our much anticipated, long awaited trip to the left coast. I wanted to tell you about our little vacation, partly to brag and partly to share.

Before pressing further, I'd like to thank Wendy's for a great promo and Airtran for coming to Charleston, SC to make our little weekend escapade possible.

Thursday.
5:30 pm We left home for the Charleston airport Thursday evening after work/school. Unfortunately, 526 turned into a parking type parkway instead of a driving type parkway and we were a little late for our flight.

7:30pm. But the same weather that hindered our drive also delayed our flight, and we had time to spare for an airport dinner.

Now, being a Murphy and especially susceptible to the laws that are attributed to Murphy, you might expect that our late flight out of Charleston turned into a late flight arriving in Atlanta. It did. But in a very UnMurphy kind of fashion, our Atlanta departure flight was also delayed and we had a few minutes to spare.

10pm. Now we were worried that the rental car place in SanFran might close before we arrived, and the hotel might overbook. I say we, but I mean Amber. She called both to confirm that our reservations were still intact, and they were.

And thanks to all the delays and the fact that our ATL-SFO flight was a late nighter, there was plenty of room for the 4 hour flight. Amber and I each took our own row, and in a very UnMurphy kind of fashion, slept pretty much the whole way there. Murphy's Law. hmmpff. What law?

Friday
Due to all the delays from that nasty little tropical storm, our 1am arrival in San Francisco turned into a 2:30am arrival. By my eastern time, that's way past my bed time, so we moseyed on over to the Hertz counter to find that nobody was present. After some searching, we found a pair of Hertz employees lounging in their break room. We coaxed them into giving us the car we had already paid for, and we drove off for the Hotel, 3 miles away.

At 3:30am other coast time, we pulled into the Travelodge only to find that, despite our advance booking, and despite our previous call to make sure we had a bed, there was no room at the inn. But just when Murphy's law of Vacations appeared ready to take hold, the night manager sent us to the Holiday Inn across the street with a letter that must have read something like, "We screwed up. Give them a bed and charge it to us." And so we had a room from Holiday Inn instead of a room from the critically disclaimed Travelodge.