Bidding & Long Hot Shower

This time, for my home trip,  both outbound (to Portland, OR) and inbound (to Knoxville, TN) flights were overbooked.  When doing checking-in online, an airline’s questionnaire was posted to request your lowest $$$ bid for being bumped to the next available flights.

Since I planned to stay in west coast less than 14 hours, there was no outbound bidding.  But, for inbound flight, I put a bid of $350.00.  After boarding all passengers, I was one of those being bumped. The lady agent at the gate podium asking me about to be bumped from noon flight (Portland -> Atlanta -> Knoxville) to red-eye flight [Portland (late evening) -> Los Angeles -> Atlanta (red eye) -> Knoxville (next morning)]. I told her it is handy that I have extra cash simply I, just like everyone else, have a family to support.  She looked at me and said “okay I give you $400.00.  $50.00 extra”.  So, I got $50.00 extra.

I used portion of this $400.00 to take our friends to dinner before my flight to Los Angeles.  The connection time was very tight.  Unfortunately, the plane had to burn more fuel on the runway before taking off because of the over weight issue.  It sat there 15 minutes just to burn.  Upon arrival, the plane waited another 30 minutes because our gate was occupied.  When I got off the plane, it had only 3 more minutes left.  Luckily this time, the flight to Atlanta was just next door.

At Atlanta airport, I bumped into three Chinese exchange researchers.  They completely lost with limited English skills.  Since their terminal and mine were the same, I took them to the gate.  Before that, I took them to breakfast also.  I can tell they didn’t like cheese and cold drinks.  We spent about 30 minutes together.

When arriving at my apartment, the first thing I did was taking a long, hot shower.  I lived without house hot water for almost two days.  Especially, after the yard work to remove more hazardous stuffs for Mom, it really, really felt funny.

I told Mom, for next home trip, I will book the exact same flights and bid again 🙂

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