Hassle, Help (Timely), More Hassle, and then the Siege of Bangalore!
Jul 10, 2008, 11:15 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Central Texas
Programs: Many, slipping beneath the horizon
Posts: 9,859
Hassle, Help (Timely), More Hassle, and then the Siege of Bangalore!
My nearly annual Delta scuffle this evening, extending from 6 until 11, but rewarding in the long run.
Finally after fits and starts (and a helping hand when in extremis from "Johnnie" in the DFW call center, still operating), three different "held" and one lost itinerary, a decent sked (no dawn launches or 23:30 layovers) for next April/May's extended trip, DFW/JFK/BUD and back, PRG/ATL/DFW, no foreign adventures, all in the front cabins ("First" in a CRJ, DFW/JFK?), all for the advertised 90K miles for each, helped by a quick - make that immediate - transfer of a few miles from AMEX.
Only $60 each for the Mordida, and while no one pays fill price for anything any more, 90k Skymiles to Central Europe from the middle of Texas beats Hell out of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (or the "street" price of a Domestic First/Int'l Business Elite ticket for the same trip. Not only that, but when you choose seats 10 months ahead of time, the choices are almost unlimited, unless displaced by an air marshal.
Now I need to quickly cancel those two held "fits and starts", leaving the lost itinerary for the reward ticketeers to clean up after! It's moments like this, when your wife of many decades and what seems fewer smiles, erupts in happiness, already planning to redicover the old family farm - and maybe cousins - somewhere near Brno. By all reports, we 'Merkins continue to be held in modest esteem in the East, and while I have no Hungarian, I've been to enough Czech family reunions at nearby SPJST halls to have corralled a smattering of necessary nouns, including "Pivo", important in a land where the brewer remains king.
Starting with "Gulyas" which must be "goulash", I'm planning to store 250 important bits of Hungarian, excluding "Paprika" before next April. Even with a head shaved in the fashion of Yul Brynner, but not even the vestige of a top-knot in back, and unable to fiddle, I'll never pass for a Magyar....(and can no longer drink like a randy Tartar!)
Finally after fits and starts (and a helping hand when in extremis from "Johnnie" in the DFW call center, still operating), three different "held" and one lost itinerary, a decent sked (no dawn launches or 23:30 layovers) for next April/May's extended trip, DFW/JFK/BUD and back, PRG/ATL/DFW, no foreign adventures, all in the front cabins ("First" in a CRJ, DFW/JFK?), all for the advertised 90K miles for each, helped by a quick - make that immediate - transfer of a few miles from AMEX.
Only $60 each for the Mordida, and while no one pays fill price for anything any more, 90k Skymiles to Central Europe from the middle of Texas beats Hell out of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (or the "street" price of a Domestic First/Int'l Business Elite ticket for the same trip. Not only that, but when you choose seats 10 months ahead of time, the choices are almost unlimited, unless displaced by an air marshal.
Now I need to quickly cancel those two held "fits and starts", leaving the lost itinerary for the reward ticketeers to clean up after! It's moments like this, when your wife of many decades and what seems fewer smiles, erupts in happiness, already planning to redicover the old family farm - and maybe cousins - somewhere near Brno. By all reports, we 'Merkins continue to be held in modest esteem in the East, and while I have no Hungarian, I've been to enough Czech family reunions at nearby SPJST halls to have corralled a smattering of necessary nouns, including "Pivo", important in a land where the brewer remains king.
Starting with "Gulyas" which must be "goulash", I'm planning to store 250 important bits of Hungarian, excluding "Paprika" before next April. Even with a head shaved in the fashion of Yul Brynner, but not even the vestige of a top-knot in back, and unable to fiddle, I'll never pass for a Magyar....(and can no longer drink like a randy Tartar!)
Jul 10, 2008, 11:22 pm
#2
Original Poster
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Central Texas
Programs: Many, slipping beneath the horizon
Posts: 9,859
I neglected the "Siege of Bangalore", as delta.com's system wouldn't take my payment and referred me to Bangalore on an evening when ghat attendants were filling in for the regular staff. The diffrence between the pronunciation of numbers varies widely in the miles between Near West Texas and Bangalore. I don't know whether it was too much ghee making for smoking ghats, but I was reduced to making two syllables out of every number, far beyond the old voice radio's "Fiver" and "Niner".