Yesterday at around midnight I finally made it back from my trip to Boston to visit my kids and my absolutely wonderful granddaughter. My kids are wonderful, too, but my granddaughter: what a joy!
So anyway it was so late because Delta booked me through Atlanta with an absolutely impossible to make connection. I thought it looked tight, but I'd read that they now only had "legal" connections to be sure you could make it from one plane to another. I had thirty seven minutes. Of course, we landed at the far end of concourse B and the Mexico City flight was taking off from the far end of concourse E. And you had to use the train unless you wanted to run what must be a mile and a half. And the flight from Boston was fifteen minutes late. So I ran and ran and almost kept up with a guy also running for the connection. A MUCH younger guy, by the way. By the time we arrived, the plane had already pulled away from the gate.
So a very nice Delta agent booked me on the next flight and clucked in outrage that Delta should have published such a connection. "Honey," she said, "You need at least fifty five minutes in Atlanta. Don't let 'em give you a connection like that again." She gave me a coupon for a free lunch and three coupons for free drinks on board. And said my baggage would accompany me.
The connection was on Aeromexico. I really like Mexicana and Aeromexico. As I've said elsewhere, they have better meals, for sure. And they have better seats in their planes for some reason, seats that have moveable head cushions and seem to have more leg room. And I had a row to myself! Better than the original flight.
So anyway I got to DF at 5:30 but my bags didn't. A very, very cheerful, almost oddly cheerful lost-baggage clerk told me they'd be on the ten-thirty flight. She actually knew this for a fact: everything is now computerized. "I want to go home," I told her. "Well, we can get your bags to you by tomorrow," she replied. "I live about five hours away," I told her. "Don't worry," she said, and gave me another great big cheerful smile.
Today around noon a guy called me and said he was bringing my bags. It was noon and he was still in DF. He wanted to know how far I was from where the buses stopped in Xico. I tried to explain that we lived off the main road. "No importa," he said. "I just need to know how long from Xico Centro." I didn't get why he'd want to go all the way to Xico, but I wasn't going to argue. Jim said, "You should have told him to turn at the Pemex station." "He didn't want to know," I said.
Well, Jim was convinced we weren't going to see them today. As the day drifted along, so was I. But then around seven, the bell rang, and there were my bags and the delivery man who had taken them by bus from DF to Xico and by taxi from Xico to our house. Next day service.
I think I wrote before about our last experience of next day service: when Dell sent a repairman for my computer. He came from Veracruz by bus, then walked to our house from the Pemex station. And fixed my computer. It was dark and kind of late when he finished, so Jim gave him a ride back to the Pemex station where he got the bus back to Xalapa where he'd get the bus to Veracruz.