Nik put his credit card in the check-in machine and it said, “Please pick up the phone to call the help line – it’s too late to check in.”  “What?  Too late to check in?  But we’re 1 1/2 hours early!”  We showed our itinerary to the lady and she said that our 2:31 flight to Denver didn’t exist.  So we had to go over to another counter, waited for a little bit, and then a lady came out.  “Are you the Anchorage people?”  Basically, she looked up our itinerary and said that our itinerary had been changed and that we’d received both an e-mail and a personal phone call – neither of which we actually received.   She started to try to rebook the flights and then discovered that United doesn’t even fly to Anchorage any more.  She said that they had changed our itinerary and rebooked us through Chicago to Denver and from Denver to Baltimore on the way back.  But they hadn’t done anything about getting us to Anchorage at all!  So basically, our flight was really messed up!  The lady was really nice, however, and managed to book us on an Alaska flight tomorrow morning from Reagan.  We’re on the “Senators” flight – we stop in Seattle but don’t have to change planes!  And we’re on the same flight on the way home, so we don’t even have to take the red-eye.  She also gave us $300 vouchers to use anywhere United flies.  So, all in all, it worked out just about the best way that it could have.  I just have bad Christmas travel luck I guess.  This happened to me last year too! 

So AK family, we’ll see you tomorrow at 2:40!