Guys. Traveling to New York yesterday was probably the hardest day of traveling that I've ever had. And I've been left waiting at the American border, and spend 30 hours straight coming back from London.
We flew out of Salt Lake, which is usually a pretty easy experience. Only, this time, it wasn't. Since Luke's company paid for the tickets, they put my last name as D. Only, all my identification, including driver's license, passport, and {expired} student ID is under N. So when we got to the TSA guard, my names didn't match.
Apparently that's a problem.
They called up a new guard to figure everything out. He had to call up another agent to check if I was on any watch lists {hint: I'm not}. Finally, I was allowed through, but only if I agreed to additional screening. Which meant that I had to go through the full body scanner and get patted down. Twice. The first one was pretty basic. Just a quick check of my arms and legs. Then I had another agent search my carry on bag, as well as the rest of me. It wasn't as invasive as I thought it would be, although she did test her gloves after giving me the pat down. My best is that they're either checking for cocaine or gunpowder.
All together, that took about half an hour. We made it to our plane in plenty of time, though. And the flight itself was pretty smooth. Well, not literally. There was a lot of turbulence, since there's so many winter storms going on.
Things got stressful again for our connecting flight in Houston. That is a BIG airport. So big, we had to take a shuttle from terminal C to terminal B. Meaning that we had to hustle in order to get on the plan at the right time. But we made it!
Finally, we got to LaGuardia, which is actually a pretty small airport. All was well until my suitcase came out of the baggage claim. I don't know what happened, but one of the wheels was pretty damaged. And by damaged, I mean, it's totally missing, and there's a big chunk missing from the bottom corner of my bag. So it looks like I'm going to need a new suitcase in order to get home.
Things started looking up when we got to the apartments where we'll be staying. It's close to the subway stop and several restaurants. I'm not sure what else is around, since I haven't been out exploring yet. Plus, the apartment is really nice. I don't think we'll need to worry about cockroaches, which was one of my main concerns being here.
Here's the view from our living room window:
We flew out of Salt Lake, which is usually a pretty easy experience. Only, this time, it wasn't. Since Luke's company paid for the tickets, they put my last name as D. Only, all my identification, including driver's license, passport, and {expired} student ID is under N. So when we got to the TSA guard, my names didn't match.
Apparently that's a problem.
They called up a new guard to figure everything out. He had to call up another agent to check if I was on any watch lists {hint: I'm not}. Finally, I was allowed through, but only if I agreed to additional screening. Which meant that I had to go through the full body scanner and get patted down. Twice. The first one was pretty basic. Just a quick check of my arms and legs. Then I had another agent search my carry on bag, as well as the rest of me. It wasn't as invasive as I thought it would be, although she did test her gloves after giving me the pat down. My best is that they're either checking for cocaine or gunpowder.
All together, that took about half an hour. We made it to our plane in plenty of time, though. And the flight itself was pretty smooth. Well, not literally. There was a lot of turbulence, since there's so many winter storms going on.
Things got stressful again for our connecting flight in Houston. That is a BIG airport. So big, we had to take a shuttle from terminal C to terminal B. Meaning that we had to hustle in order to get on the plan at the right time. But we made it!
Finally, we got to LaGuardia, which is actually a pretty small airport. All was well until my suitcase came out of the baggage claim. I don't know what happened, but one of the wheels was pretty damaged. And by damaged, I mean, it's totally missing, and there's a big chunk missing from the bottom corner of my bag. So it looks like I'm going to need a new suitcase in order to get home.
Things started looking up when we got to the apartments where we'll be staying. It's close to the subway stop and several restaurants. I'm not sure what else is around, since I haven't been out exploring yet. Plus, the apartment is really nice. I don't think we'll need to worry about cockroaches, which was one of my main concerns being here.
Here's the view from our living room window:
Clearly I haven't been bugging you enough about changing your last name :P
ReplyDeleteClearly :)
DeleteAshleigh! Ironic that we were talking about the name change thing only a few days before that! I didn't even think about the airport situation. Make sure they get it right when you come home. Best of luck in New York!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ali! Yeah, that conversation should have sparked me into action or something. It all would've been fine if I'd brought my marriage certificate along. Ah well, live and learn. Love you!
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