My mate Alex organised a mini cab to take me to Heathrow Airport.  I had booked a flight via the Qantas website using my frequent flyer points.

The flight was a code share on a British Airways plane.  My flight was going from terminal 5 which is brand new and absolutely huge.

I figured that i would give the automatic check in machine a go so I whipped out my passport and my ticket info printout.  I entered the relevant information and was promptly told by the computer that it could not help me in anyway and that I should go to the “Assistance” counter.

This is where my whole day went downhill.

When I think back it had started out so nicely; nice blue sky, a walk and a coffee and paper reading in Starbucks.  A bit of a walk along Buckingham Palace Road

All the niceness of the day was dashed and kicked to the gutter when the woman behind the counter said there was something wrong with the ticket and I need to go up to section 13 and see them in ticketing.

So off I hiked to the ticket people.  I have a lifetime Qantas club membership which allows me to use business and first class check ins so i used them at the ticket section. Apparently the BA guy had a problem with this and was ranting and raving on about first class. I looked around and I was holding up exactly … no one.

I asked him to help me out rather than go on about the first class thing.

I showed him my Qantas card which seemed to appease him a little.  He clicked a few things on the computer and then said that Qantas had not issued the ticket properly or that it was not complete. none of this made any sense to me because the printout Qantas had issued said it was confirmed.

Because he liked me so much he said “nothing I can do about it mate, you will have to talk to Qantas about it”

I asked him what their number was because I had no idea. He suggested I ring the number on the back of the qantas card … yeah..that was a 1300 number in Australia.

I let him know I had a prepaid phone with about 50 pence left on it

Finally he got off his fat arse and got a number for me.

off I went to call them and was promptly put on hold for 7 minutes.  I hung up and sent a text to Alex asking him to put some credit on the phone for me.  what a champ in a few minutes it had 10 quid on it!

I decided it would be better to try BA again.  Nope, that was useless but they did suggest going around to Terminal 3 where Qantas was located.

So I went down to the basement and found the train station and boarded.  nice modern train. Found a seat and dialed up Qantas as we had a few minutes before we were ready to go.

Soon as a human answered I asked him not to put me on hold.  I went through the story of having booked online and using my points. He was ok. He found the problem, just as the train pulle dout of the station on its way to Terminal 3.  No matter I felt much better cause this guy was going to sort it all out.

He told me that when Qantas had gone to process my debit card to pay for the taxes on the ticket it had been declined.  Oh I said, gosh  that’s never happened to me before!  hahahahah

Anyway if I could give him a card number he would process it right now and get my ticket issued in time for me to catch the flight to New york.

Halfway through giving him my card number we hit a deep spot and the phone connection was lost…

I nearly cried like a little girl

I grabbed by incredibly heavy new big suitcase, laptop, and heavy winter coat and struggled to terminal 3 looking for Qantas.

Nowhere… I asked at the staff at an airline that I’ve never heard of. They had no idea. I went to BA and asked them. They directed me to BA ticketing at the end of the hall and said that BA ticketing handled all the Qantas tickets.

Can you feel my hatred of that jerk back at BA ticketing in Terminal 5?

By now I’m dragging all my stuff and am holding my phone to my ear talking to Qantas.  I’m going through it all again with a new girl.

I’m talking to her and to the lady at the BA ticket counter.  BA cannot help me, it’s all down to Qantas.  Are they going to come good and issue the ticket cause time is running out fast.

YES!  The ticket is issued and the BA gal even holds a seat for me on the flight.

At least the train ride back to terminal 5 was more relaxed.

The BA club was excellent and I used and abused it and the flight was excellent as well.

This all goes to show there is no way around paying taxes

My last day in riga was a cold grey rainy day.

Kris was not that pleased at having to escort me to the airport at such an early hour.  It was around 8 am when we left the apartment.  My last time that I would see Terbatas Street

A couple of days earlier I had ditched the expensive back pack I had bought in Australia except for the small day bag and it was packed away in my large new suitcase.  I had upgraded because I can’t help myself, I’m always buying and collecting junk.

So I dragged this heavy thing all the way to the markets. Then it was a pain up and down stairs for use of the underpass pedestrian tunnels.  Kris let me struggle with it, nice guy.  He’s not a morning person.

Finally we reached the bus station and waited in the drizzle for the airport bus.  when it arrived it was already quite full and it was a hell of a struggle to get the damn suitcase on board.

After about half an hour of being tossed around standing up in the isle holding a ten ton bag we finally arrived at the Riga International Airport.

Kris directed me to RyanAir while he went for a smoke.

RyanAir are the lowest priced airline in this and some other universes. I think the fare from Riga to London was about $10.  By the time taxes were added it came to a pretty reasonable $90 or thereabouts. You would have to agree that for a 3 hour international flight that’s not bad.

The trick with RyanAir is to follow their instructions implicitly or you will pay very dearly indeed.  For example if you fail to printout your boarding pass and bring it with you, it’s going to cost you $80!

They also have a very strict policy with regards to carry on and checked baggage.  Both have weight restrictions. My concern was the check in baggage the limit is 15 kilos.

I carefully placed my big new suitcase on the scales hoping that this would magically make it weight less, cause dragging it around all morning had made me begin to think it may weight more than 15 kilos.

The woman behind the counter looked at the scales and involuntarily sucked in some air then turned to me with a look of pure disbelief.  She stammered that my bag was overweight in broken English.

I tried to remain calm and smoothly asked, Oh by how much?

She looked at the scale again and then turned to me with what was now a rather white face, the blood had pretty much drained out.  8 kilos she whispered, probably not wanting to have any loud noises startle the clearly insane person standing in front of her.

I asked her how much it was going to cost me to put it on the plane. This must have been such a rare occurence that she needed to make a call.  Apparently it was going to cost $250!

So I got out of the line and flipped open the big new suitcase near an unused scale.

The day pack from my discarded backpack was sitting on top so I started going thru my junk and putting as much as I could into the day bag.

After about 15 minutes I had gotten the weight down to 16 kilos and that was all I could figure to take out.  Luckily they didn’t bat an eyelid this time and we were ready to fly

After a quick very manly goodbye to Kris I headed into the security line. It doesn’t matter how many times I go through this I always seem to get something wrong.  After taking off my belt, shoes, coat and taking my coins out of my pocket, the laptop out of it’s bag I walked through the metal detector.

BEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPP

What?!?!?!

What could be making the noise.  I’m patting myself down as a huge clearly Russian Gulag guard comes lumbering toward me.

Pat Pat, no coins, pat pat, nothing in the back pockets, pat pat, nothing in the breast pocket.

The giant guard tells me to spread my legs and stand with my arms out.  That’s, of course, when I notice I left my stupid metal watch on! Damn!

Now most of us have probably had this situation and they wave a wand over you and let you go.

Nope, not in Riga.

The guard puts his hands on yours truly, and I mean all over.  Jokingly I said he should buy me dinner first but that didn’t help so I suggested that maybe he could let his good looking female colleague take over.  All this comments seemed to make him even more diligent in his search for a bomb cunningly hidden in some orifice.

By the end of it I was shaking and wanting a shower…

Just another example of how time effects us all