Korea - Day 1 - Just Get Me There!

As with my last two overseas adventures, this one starts in...Arkansas. The last week of April I was blessed with a class in Arkansas. Tim and Beverley make me feel like family while I'm there. Even more special, I was able to enjoy the first part of the week with Keith, a fellow Sunday School teacher from my church and a wonderful saint. It was such an encouragement to be able to have dinner with him Monday and Tuesday. Best of all, he loved the Whole Hog Cafe and AQ Chicken.

The weather in Arkansas was beautiful, warm and sunny all week. Then, Friday came and with that, massive storm clouds. As I drove to the airport I was treated to a spectacular lightning storm, the likes of which I hadn't seen since my brother and I drove across the Plains back in 1993. Great, I thought, as I was worried about flight delays. My routing was from XNA (Northwest Arkansas Regional) to Memphis, where I had 90 minutes to make the flight to Los Angeles. Once at LAX I would have 3 hours to make the connection to Seoul.

Surprisingly, our flight from XNA left with no delays despite the lightning and the rain. Thankfully there was enough of a lull that we were able to climb out and get in front of the storm. We landed in Memphis and I checked the board for the Los Angeles flight. There was a delay posted - instead of 6:55pm, we were now leaving at 7:20pm. No problem, I thought, I still have over 2 hours to make a connection at LAX and I have no checked baggage. I strolled over to the lounge, settled in and got caught up on emails.

At about 6:45pm an announcement was made in the lounge, "Final call for Delta flight 2513 with service to Los Angeles." I thought, that's odd, the flight doesn't go out until 7:20pm. Dutifully, I grabbed my stuff and ran down to the gate. Upon arriving, I found an empty gate area, two gate agents scrambling on their computers and one passenger standing at the counter begging to get on the flight. Come to find out that the delayed flight arrived early and they re-rescheduled the flight to its original time.

By the time the dust settled I found out that I had missed the door closing by 30 seconds and, for the seven passengers caught by this unfortunate timing, we were going to have to find alternate routing to Los Angeles that evening. A young couple decided to go the next day, but for three of us we grabbed at the chance to go through Atlanta. The problem was that the flight was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles the same time my flight to Korea was leaving.

Thankfully the gate agent was able to get me a seat on the next flight from Los Angeles to Seoul. The problem with that is that I now had a 12-hour layover in Los Angeles, and would not be arriving in Seoul until 5:00pm Sunday night. My final destination was Daegu, which was a good 2-3 hours by train from Seoul. This was not looking good. On top of all this was the fact that I still didn't have a hotel booked in Daegu, as the major websites were showing a lack of room availability for the middle 4 days of my stay.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles I made my way to the Delta ticket counter, where I received my hotel voucher and some meal coupons. Exhausted I made my way to the Holiday Inn. Once in my room, I made reservations for the nights in Daegu that were available and decided that I'd figure out the rest of it once I got there.

This trip is taking longer than I thought it would...