And the adventure begins

I spent Monday doing last minute laundry and dishes, The Boy got the bathroom sparkling -- Yep, nothing says "Clean" like company. Then I packed up and the three of us headed off to Bozeman.

The Boy was transferred to our friends Jane, Bruce and Kyle. Mrs. Ref and I headed to the hotel for a good night's sleep because we had to be up early to catch the 5 a.m. shuttle to the airport.

We went to bed around 9 - 9:30 and started to doze off. And that's when the fun began.

At about 9:50, we got a call from the gal who gave us her standby buddy tickets. She informed us that the flight from Bozeman was overbooked and we had basically lost our standby seats. The whole conversation was much longer, but the outcome of it is that we are now driving to Helena to catch a flight out of there.

Yeah . . . spend the night in Bozeman and fly out of Helena. Happy happy joy joy.

The good news here is: 1) we were notified in plenty of time so that we won't get stranded in Montana before we even leave (hopefully); 2) we didn't have to wake up any earlier than we had planned because, although it's about an hour and 45 minutes away, it's a later flight; 3) we have a friend in Helena who will meet us at Perkins and drive us to the airport (thereby avoiding Helena airport parking fees); 4) apparently we're now on a direct flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam (thereby avoiding yet another opportunity at JFK to be bumped); 5) If we leave early enough, we might actually get to eat breakfast at Perkins!!

Yep . . . I said MINNEAPOLIS TO AMSTERDAM.

That's for The Kid In Germany who I hope will read this. We are now flying into Amsterdam and will take a train into Berlin. Or at least that's the current plan. I've also heard that there's a train from Berlin that actually goes to Gustrow, so this actually might work out better than before.

Hmmmm . . . Travel updates by blog; we'll see how this works out.

AND SPEAKING OF TRAVEL UPDATES . . .

The Kid was originally supposed to be flying home today. But we changed her ticket to later in the month because of school and our little adventure thingy ma bop here. Unfortunately, Swiss Air never notified Orbitz that her ticket had been changed (or maybe that was my job, I don't know). So twice during the night, my cell phone rang with helpful updates that my flight from Berlin to Zurich, and from Zurich to NYC were on time.

Yeah . . . nothing like travel updates for a non-existent trip on a night when I need to sleep well before driving 1:45 to another city to hopefully catch a flight that has room.