The Rhode Island wedding: Part one.

The whole reason we were traveling to first New York, then New Hampshire: the wedding of Allison and Patrick. This is from her photographer's blog. You can view the rest here.

So, how many times has this happened to you? You log on to the airline's website to print boarding passes the day of your flight, only to receive a message saying you can't do that, please call the airline.

When you call, you are told that your tickets were for the day before, and you were a no-show. Yes, you can re-book, but there will be a $150 fee per ticket, and there aren't any more flights that day.

No, this has never happened to you, only to fools like my husband and me, who book red-eye tickets and can't keep the dates straight? You want to know who knew when we were supposed to travel? My daughter, the bride, who kept saying, "I thought you were getting in Wednesday, not Thursday, are you sure?"

Thus began the most hellish (and expensive) voyage of my life. There were three missed flights, a full-body pat-down by airport security, a nearly-stolen laptop, bags arriving on the wrong carousel, and forgotten iPods, books and a sweater.

Flower-girl Charlotte, the blonde imp,
with her sash crooked.

At the end of this trip was a beautiful, flawless wedding (except for a certain blonde imp crying for her mommy) and an incomparably lovely bride, but the getting there took some doing.

I hadn't packed yet when I got the bad news about the flight, because I had been getting things arranged for my substitute teachers, sewing Charlotte's flower-girl dress, sewing sashes for the other two flower-girls, making a silk nightgown for the bride, and finding a bag to match my new shoes.

So when told I would have to take an earlier flight, I just threw things in a suitcase. We had to get to Las Vegas to catch a flight to La Guardia via Atlanta. (Don't quite get that? Me neither.) I considered driving, but was overruled by my husband, who after much swearing and lots of money, got us an American Airlines flight.

Racing down the 405, we debated whether we could take the Van Nuys Flyaway. I consulted the smartphone and found out that if we didn't make the 5 p.m. bus, we wouldn't make it. As we neared the Roscoe offramp, a long line of weary commuters waiting to exit made the decision for us. Parking at LAX was to be our fate.

Whipping out the smartphone again, I found a long-term lot with a free shuttle for $4.95 a day, versus the official airport parking of $12. We got there to discover that fine print said the price was for 30-day or longer parking, but it was still $6.95, a bargain. That was for an internet price only, so I had to sit in their lobby and finish the paperwork on my phone.

The other people got off the shuttle at the first stop, Southwest, and we whipped through all the rest of the terminals to get to American Airlines, our carrier. There we tried to print boarding passes, only to be denied by a computer for the second time that day. Apparently, you have to check in 40 minutes before departure, we now had only 30 minutes. Physically missing a flight is one thing. Being told the plane is there on the tarmac, we're just not letting you on, is entirely another.

Perhaps if I were younger, prettier, and could cry on cue, I could have pressed our case, and made them let us on. But I'm not, and I didn't.

Cool lighting sculpture in McCarran Airport in Las Vegas.

Same story as before: $150 per changing fee, which was damn near the price of the ticket, and oh-by-the-way, that was our last flight to Sin City. The counter person looked at her screen and told us that Southwest had an 8:10 p.m. flight, which would be a push to make our 10:30 connection, but we had to try, or forfeit yet another airline ticket.

I haven't had the heart to total up the damages in wasted airfare, but I know it is multiple four-figures.

So we trudged all the way back to Southwest, in Terminal 1, dragging all our bags from Terminal 5, and paid for a third set of tickets to McCarran. I tripped the metal-detector and had to have a pat-down from a female TSA. It could have been erotic, had she been more attractive and not wearing industrial-strength rubber gloves. Oh, and the fact that when she got to "sensitive areas," she used the back of her hand. Well, what the hell fun is that?

It turns out that my silver necklace with the MG logo was the culprit, so I learned how to avoid that particular thrill for the rest of the trip, but while I was getting felt up by a government worker, some woman walked off with my MacBook Pro computer.

Apparently she thought it belonged to her son, and was quite snippy when my husband said quite loudly, "That's not yours!" He was retrieving my stuff from the conveyor belt, and narrowly avoided disaster. Then we sat down in the terminal, nervously looking at the board that said our flight was delayed, and I went to pull out my iPod, only to find that I had left it in plain sight in the car we just parked.

Instead of watching the feature film I had on my iPod, I was frantically calling the foreigners who had my car, asking them to put my iPod in a less conspicuous place. But like me, they were busy, so I never got a call back.

I could feed a one-armed bandit, but not get a drink, in Vegas.

All I wanted to do was to get to Vegas and get a drink. On the plane I ordered a Scotch with a ginger ale back, but I was told I could only have one or the other, if I didn't want them mixed. Apparently, they had to make another trip for the soda, and the flight isn't that long.

We got to McCarran only to find that I could play slot machines, but all the bars were closed in that part of the terminal. We had to walk
forever to get to the baggage claim, and we were freaking out about not missing our flight.

All of the passengers were standing around waiting for bags, and I decided to go check in for our next leg. Apparently, my poor husband kept checking the signs on the carousel for 20 minutes, only to have our flight inexplicably change baggage locations.

Had our flight to Atlanta not been delayed 45 minutes, we wouldn't have made it, but the travel gods at last smiled on us. Another airplane change in Atlanta, and at last, we were New York City bound. I finally understood the couple who had been stranded by the Icelandic volcano eruption who spent $12,000 to get home. At that point, I would have severed a limb to get to my destination.

I couldn't sleep, and looked for the book I had paid full-price for in LA when I realized I had no iPod, and remembered I left it, and my husband's sweater I was using as a pillow, on the last flight.

One of my crappy photos of bridal party members,
including binky-faced Charlotte.

My daughter and her fiance met us at La Guardia and deposited us at our Long Island hotel. In the sweetest gesture I have seen in a long time, they returned with pancakes and Eggs Benedict from a nearby aluminum-sided diner, the only hot food I had eaten in the entire 18-hour trip.

And then we slept for three hours.

Next week: The beautiful wedding and getting lost five out of seven car trips in Rhode Island.