Whoever said “getting there is half the adventure” didn’t fly standby

Thanks to our friend Ryan, Eric and I purchased buddy passes to fly to New York on JetBlue for Christmas. You pretty much can’t beat two round-trip tickets from L.A. to New York for under $200. Flying on buddy passes means you fly standby—if there are open seats on the flight after all the paying customers have boarded, you get to go.

I finished my last final exam and had about five hours to pack everything necessary for the ten day trip. I didn’t think we were going to get on the flight that night because it was pretty full, but we had to give it a shot. After waiting around for about three hours, my prediction was correct—no such luck with leaving that night. The bright side of it all was that we were near Bob’s Big Boy!!!

We had no such luck the next day. The first flight was out of Burbank. First it was delayed two hours, then another hour, then eventually cancelled. We then drove to Long Beach airport to try and get out of there only to discover that the flight that left an hour before we arrived had TWENTY-SIX OPEN SEATS. Thanks a lot Burbank flight! We tried several other flights and had no luck. We could have boarded a flight that had a layover in Salt Lake City, but then we would have been stranded. I didn’t think it was a good idea for two gay men to be stranded in capital city of the Mormon church.

Saturday was a new day. Our best chances pointed to a few flights out of Long Beach so that’s where we started. No such luck with the first two nonstop flights. Our hopes were up when we were told the flight with a ten hour layover in Portland was looking good. After watching about twelve flights leave without us, we were excited to at least be going somewhere. Well, while en route to Portland, the flight from Portland to New York was cancelled. I can’t even describe the feeling when you look at the screen and see cancelled next to your flight when you're in a strange city. It turns out Portland was experiencing the worst snow storm in many years and pretty much every flight was cancelled. Not knowing how long we were going to be there, we found a hotel and checked in.

After several calls, it seemed like to get to anywhere (either to New York or back home), we had to get to Seattle. Portland was experiencing freezing rain which prevented planes from flying while Seattle just had snow. We got to our hotel and attempted to make the most of our night there. However, since Portland isn’t use to such severe weather, everything was shut down—movie theaters, restaurants, etc. The next morning, we began our search for a way to Seattle. Our first attempt was on the Amtrak. A few hours after booking the train, we received a call that all trains were cancelled. Our next attempt was on the Greyhound bus. When we called to book a reservation, we were told that all buses through Portland were cancelled. Our third attempt was purchasing two one-way flights on Alaska since they were still allowing people to make reservations. When we showed up to the airport and stood in line to check in, they told us all flights were cancelled. We were definitely not going to rent a car to drive because neither one of us felt comfortable driving. So it looked like we were in Portland for another night, until we noticed there was room on the midnight flight from Portland to New York. This was our last and final attempt—if we didn’t get on this flight, the next step was go home and enjoy Christmas in Santa Monica. Our luck changed and we were able to board. After sitting on the plane at the gate for three hours as the plane was being de-iced, we were finally off to New York! Ten days in New York turned into seven, but we still had a great time (a blog about our trip will be coming shortly).

So, the moral of the story is: never fly standby during the holiday season when so many parts of the country are experiencing the worst winter storm in years!