“Itinerary not found” the screen said after the nice gentleman who works for Delta airlines punched in my info at the self check-in station.
I wasn’t the only one, so the three of us who couldn’t get our boarding passes headed to the ticket counter. The other two girls got their passes. My name was nowhere to be found on the computer.
Uh-oh.
By mistake, my name was left off the confirmation list of the 80+ racers leaving to Dublin yesterday. I went and told my squad leader, Aaron, who remained crazy calm as he said, “We’ll fix this.”
He prayed the people at the ticket counter would allow us to change my name out for another racer who didn’t make it, but when we got to the counter we were told we had to go to another ticket counter…in another part of the airport. As I tried to unpack my huge pack from its travel duffel, a worker told us to move it outside so we did.
And we ran as fast as we could, me with my pack, Aaron with his daypack and mine, to find the other counter. We got there only to find the line was super long and we knew there was no way we’d get there in time. Aaron got on the phone with AIM’s logistics guru Jake Rodriguez as he tried to get me another ticket. He did.
And then I realized my passport was missing.
In the hustle and bustle of unpacking my pack from its duffel, I dropped it. We ran as fast as we could back. By God’s grace the woman who seemed to be in charge of the counter had it in her hand and when I told her it was mine and that we were running late, she let me cut in line telling me I had 7 minutes left to check in. So I did and an hour later I was on the plane headed to Dublin, where I am now.
Whew.
The World Race has officially begun.
