DL 0721 ATL

DL 0782 ATL

DL 0108 MAD

DL 0270 BAR

DL 0194 BAR

  Flying standby is a great, enormously inexpensive way to fly, until it isn’t. One moment it’s a no-brainer and the next, a brain teaser. It’s in that twilight between “easy peasy” and “what if we never get out of here” where The Price Is Right excitement of standby travel lives.

  The numbers for our flight to Atlanta and then on to Madrid were holding, though thinly so, on the Thursday night before departure. But on Friday morning Madrid was now overbooked. That meant Plan B was now operational, meaning a layover in Atlanta and a Saturday flight to Barcelona instead. 

  Oh, and the train delay caused our apartment entrance code to expire. But then our luck reverted back to good, and there arrived two other guests who quickly surmised us as clueless Americans and graciously saw us inside, to our door and then inside our door. I guess by that time of night we looked like we were assisted living clients.

That option also opened a Plan B1 out of LAX later that Friday morning should Atlanta also go tits up (as we say in the shadow and fog of “awaiting seat assignment.”)

  Atlanta held by the skin of our teeth with an active employee grabbing the last available seat. That success, in turn, opened up an unexpected Plan B2 in the form of an earlier Friday Barcelona flight with the same availability as Saturday’s. With this we’d now be able to book the only available train to Rota on that same Saturday. (All Sunday trains were sold out.)

This is what 48 hours on the road looks like

  I took you on this dubiously interesting sidebar to show the difference between a smooth, easy journey and one fraught with delays, unavailability and significant additional expense.

  Had we not made it on that Atlanta flight, though, we would have had to Uber to LAX ($80) and then laid over in Atlanta ($150-200) until the Saturday night  flight to Barcelona. Since the Sunday trains were sold out, that would have meant at least a one night layover in Barcelona ($250-300).

  Of all this sounds like privileged whining, it is, but here me out. It’s neither the possible delays or increased costs. After all, we’re talking about a six -week stay marred by at most three or four days. It’s the anxiety of not knowing the end play. If not Atlanta or LAX or Madrid or Barcelona, then what? And when? Until you’re ticketed or the train has left the station, you’re no more sure of things than Schroedinger’s cat. Now that’s anxiety for you.

  Yet everything worked just swell until we reached the final leg of our near 48-hour trek . The 22:10 train out of Seville was delayed 30 minutes and then another 30 minutes just a couple of clicks outside our final destination. Woody Allen once said that eternity is a long time, especially toward the end. That was the train from Seville. 

  Oh, and the train delay caused our apartment entrance code to expire. But then our luck reverted back to good, and there arrived two other guests who quickly surmised us as clueless Americans and graciously saw us inside, to our door and then inside our door. I guess by that time of night we looked like we were assisted living clients.

  Make no mistake. We’re more than grateful how well things went and in thinking of how badly they could have, we consider ourselves incredibly fortunate.

  Especially when you consider at my age, I’m still treating my body as if it were a bounce house. When my head hit the bed that night, it didn’t move off for about thirteen hours.

Makes it all worth while