For reasons I no longer remember, when I bought my plane ticket to come home from the Huey Lewis and the News concerts in North Dakota (via Denver, a necessary connection) I booked it for the 3:30 flight. Perhaps I thought I'd spend the day sightseeing, or perhaps there were no cheap seats left on the 12:30 flight due to the phalanx of band members who'd already been booked on it. As it happened, the band's crew was booked on the 3:30 flight as well, also perhaps due to the phalanx that had taken all the seats on the earlier one.
(I'm kidding about the phalanx. Kind of. There are nine bandmembers plus a crew member who travels with them. But on a 50-person plane, that's a lot of seats getting taken up by one party.)
Anyway, one of the guys in the crew got the bright idea to try to standby on an earlier flight. Knowing the 12:30 flight was pretty full, he suggested the flight before it. I had a rental car, so I could shuttle me and him and some of the other crew members up to the airport in the morning to try to get out sooner.
But in calling the airline, he discovered that the only flight before the 12:30 one was at 6:55am. Which would have meant that we'd need to leave the hotel by 5am. To give a frame of reference, the concert the night before didn't even end until around 10pm, and then he had work to do packing up, and I had unwinding to do after all that dancing around. If we pursued this plan, it would have meant getting only a few hours of sleep. Once informed of this, two of the crew members originally interested in this plan immediately became uninterested. Then the remaining one and I, after discussing it, also changed our mind because the pain-benefit ratio just didn't seem to be favorable enough to justify the sleep-deprivation torture.
But I still wanted to get out earlier. I felt sufficiently "done" with my trip to North Dakota, and I was looking forward to going home and taking care of Seriously Important Things like buying groceries for the week. So I left the hotel around 9:30am and raced up to the airport to get myself on the top of the standby list for the 12:30 flight. There are many variables that determine one's priority on the list, but one of them is check-in order. Another is Premier status in United's Mileage Plus program, which, committed (and loyal) traveler I am, I have. Anyway, I did what I could so that if there were any available seats on that plane, one of them would be mine.
The band came up in a van some time later, with those three crew members hitching a ride on it in hopes of also standing-by on the earlier flight. It's actually an interesting thing, watching the band travel. The massive amount of logistics to get 15-20 people, gear, and luggage from place to place is pretty incredible. I'm a bit in awe of how they do it. And they do it a lot -- the band covers quite a bit of ground as they tour.
Unfortunately this roadworthiness was my undoing. Because as people checked in for the 12:30 flight, there came to be only three seats left for stand-by. Which all got taken up by the three crew members thanks to their hoity-toity 1K Mileage Plus status, which, even though they had checked in later than I had, stomped all over my puny little Premier status. My 25,000 flown miles the year before were just no match for their 100,000...
It was all very friendly though. They knew I wanted to get on the flight, and the assistant tour manager even took it upon herself to ask the airline if they could still squeeze me on. But when check-in got closed and the gate agent gave out the boarding passes to the three crew members, it pretty much boiled down to, "You three can go. Passenger Gellis, you're screwed."
There was one last chance, however. The computer showed a full flight, but if not everyone was in their seats when the plane was ready to close, I could still get on. As the clock ticked and ticked, there was still one seat left. The gate agent made an announcement, "Passenger Verdun, please proceed to the plane for immediate boarding."
The clocked ticked some more. No passenger. Some more ticking. I got excited. Tick tick tick...
Then, slowly sauntering across the room came the wayward passenger, acting completely oblivious to the huge inconvenience he about to cause me by taking his rightfully paid-for seat. Jerk.
And that was it, there was nowhere else to put me. The plane closed up and pulled away, and then promptly parked on the tarmac for an hour while weather in Denver delayed the departure. I meanwhile camped out in the terminal, where at least there was Internet and electricity. (In fact, there were some nice little desk booths there in the waiting area to use, but I digress.)
Eventually the remaining crew members arrived for the 3:30 flight so at least there were people to talk to, but unfortunately the 3:30 flight had now turned into the 4:10 flight. That weather, which had held up the earlier outbound flight, had also held up the inbound one we needed to board. Quickly, quickly, once the plane arrived they cleared it out and loaded us in, hoping to take off before we lost our landing slot. But it was still going to be close for all the connections.
As we taxied after landing, the flight attendant had all of us with connections raise our hands so that the other people could see who they should let get out first. Ask a gate agent to radio ahead to our flights that we're on our way, the flight attendant also advised. Good idea. Except that the gate agent looked at us like we had three heads when we asked her to do that. We were suddenly faced with an instantaneous decision: stand there and convince her that radioing ahead was the right thing to do, or dash through half an airport terminal. Most of us opted for the latter, yelling back at her our destinations ("San Franciscoooooooooo...") in case she felt at all inclined to help us out after all.
Meanwhile, we had arrived at gate 67. My next flight was over 35 gates away, with a gigantic food court and other miscellaneous non-gated areas to traverse as well. Oh, and did I mention that my rolling suitcase stopped rolling on this trip? The wheels turned, but the handle no longer raised. I could either be the Hunchback of Denver Airport as I wheeled the thing along, or I could literally carry my carry-on luggage. Neither rendered me as fleet-footed as I really needed to be. As the airport loudspeakers boomed increasingly menacing announcements ("Flight 595 to San Francisco is boarding NOW. Get your ass over here THIS INSTANT!" (slightly paraphrased)) I limped and lumbered along, all the while wondering what my life would have been like at that moment had I caught that earlier flight... Finally, and breathlessly, I arrived at my gate. Where I boarded and then sat there for at least 20 minutes before we went anywhere.
But the weather had now cleared, and two hours after takeoff I was back in San Francisco. And now I'm home. Without groceries. The end.
Edit 6/24: I'm an idiot. It just dawned on me that my suitcase converted into a backpack. That would have made it MUCH easier to carry around through the Denver airport. I would have had to adjust a bit since I also had a daypack, but, still, it would have been much more manageable to strap the suitcase onto my back than lug it awkwardly by the handholds.
Maybe I deserved to get bumped from that earlier flight as some sort of pre-emptively meted-out punishment for being such a dork...
Edit 6/26: You know, the more I think about it the more I think my airport adventure was the karmic backslap of the travel gods reminding me who's boss. When I had been packing I was very rushed, and I over-stuffed my suitcase with more than I'd need for a short weekend trip because I didn't have time to make better decisions about what I'd actually need. I decided it didn't matter, though, because if the suitcase ended up heavy it's not like I was going to be carrying it anywhere.
I think that decision was the root of my troubles, right there.