I’ll be running some updated and revised convention reports— I find them fun to revisit and I’m told some of you do too.
Unlike our trip two weeks earlier to Portland Oregon which left Boston at 7am—meaning we had to be up and out of the house at 5am— our flight to Chicago was at 1pm so we thought this would be an easy trip out— never assume my friends.
We’d planned on leaving the house at 10am sharp— and we did, only thing was as we were racing along I-290 heading towards Framingham and the Logan Express I realized I’d left my wallet at home. Now you need all kinds of ID at airports nowadays but I had my passport with me (I find it easier to keep that in my breast pocket than to dig my license out of my wallet) but that would mean I’d be in Chicago with no money and no credit cards— for about three seconds I weighed the option of just going ahead but I jumped off the next exit and headed back. Yes, Veronica had money, she had credit cards, but I like being able to pay for things and this was not only a business trip to Chicago but we’d also be celebrating our Wedding Anniversary while we were there and I had plans for a nice dinner.
After recovering my wallet and being back on the road WAZE had us arriving at Logan Express at 11:04am— that meant we’d be on the 11:30am bus to Logan Airport which meant we’d be pulling up to the United Terminal at 12:15pm at the latest, still 45 minutes before our flight, no need to worry right?
Wrong. We got to Logan Express and there were big red signs up saying “Lot full— come inside for details about parking at the overflow lot”.
Ugh.
As it turned out it was pretty easy to do, you prepay your parking and you park at a lot across the street from the AMC theater and then you wait for the bus to come. It was actually easier to park there than the garage since the garage is always full and you have to park on the roof and then get back down to the lobby, but the overflow lot has no signage at all so you have little idea where to wait for your bus.
It was cold and rainy so we huddled together in the zombie apocalypse like shelter in the middle of the parking lot. A pilot got off a “Dropoff only” bus and was saying goodbye to some of his companions so I decided to ask him if I was waiting in the right place. He was great, he assured me I’d see the bus and it should be only another 10 minutes or so. He even drove over as he was leaving and offered to drive us back to the main station but we opted to just stay and wait out of fear of missing the bus to Logan if he drove us over.
“What time is your flight?” He asked.
“One pm.”
He made that face like- yikes — as he looked at his watch.
“We’re TSA Pre Checked.” I added.
“Oh,” he smiled, “then you should be fine.”
TSA Precheck was our secret weapon. Different line. You don’t have to take off your shoes, you don’t have to take off your belt, no laptops out of your bag, etc— you speed through security. Secret weapon.
The bus arrived and we got on and were soon on our way. We should be fine, TSA Precheck right?
Only looking at our boarding passes I noticed that it didn’t say TSA Precheck on it. You see when you order your tickets you have to put in your TT info number which then creates a little Check Mark Logo on the top of your boarding pass. In this case, the show booked our tickets and we couldn’t remember if they’ asked for the number.
No worries, we opened our smart phones and were able to add our TT Pre Check numbers into our flight info— now all we’d need to do is print out a new boarding pass at the airport— we’d need to stop anyway because we’d have to check our luggage.
We got through TSA and to our gate and the flight was boarding early— the flight left early and we arrived early— all was good in the world. We set down in Chicago O’Hare and then headed to one of four thousand baggage kiosks to find our luggage. Chicago’s airport is massive, much bigger than Boston’s Logan. From there we walked a good mile to the hotel shuttle area and pretty soon we were dropped at the Embassy Suites directly across the street from the Donald Stephens Convention Center and next door to Gibson’s Steakhouse— my hands down favorite restaurant in the world where we’d be having our anniversary dinner that evening. We checked in and cleaned up before heading out to explore the area.
More next week.