And we’re off to New York City for five days. Shows, museums, dining with friends, all kinds of goodness coming up. I probably will do nothing on the music, but I will certainly blog about the days. We’ll call it creative writing.

By the time we got to Hartsfield International, my morning coffee was bursting to get out, so I headed off to the men’s room while Ginny and Carol Lee got in the line to check in. By the time I got back to them, Carol Lee was trying to type in her confirmation number in the little electronic kiosk thing, and it was rejecting her.

Customer service appeared and took her ticket. Then came back and tried checking in Ginny. And then finally tried my ticket. Then she took all three and disappeared into the back. When she returned, it was with the news that the tickets had been cancelled.

Well, this was exciting. I pulled out all the paperwork and called the toll-free number, and was a little surprise when BB&T answered. Of course, I thought, I got two tickets with my VISA® TravelPoints® and paid for one. I told the nice person in Mumbai that I was standing in line at Hartsfield International and that my tickets had been canceled and he needed to fix it.

As he waited for the computer to get in gear, he started to give me some kind of sales pitch, I think. I told him that it was hard to hear and that if he were giving me a sales pitch, stop; if he was asking me something, he needed to start over.

Not a problem, he was going to transfer me to a travel specialist. Yanni for on-hold. This was starting to be a good hell.

After a while, my Mumbai friend came back online to apologize for the delay, but the travel office was not open on the weekends. I should call back on Monday.

Please connect me to a supervisor, I asked tersely. More Yanni followed.

After a while, he came back online to apologize for the delay, but there were no supervisors. If I could call back in 30 minutes…

Well.

There I was, standing in AirTran’s check-in line, with printed tickets that were no good and a 10:00 flight leaving without me. And no one at BB&T could help me until business hours on Monday.

Meanwhile, Marc and Mary Frances were in another line, working out what to do about Molly’s not having photo ID.

Ginny went over to our nice customer service lady and simply bought tickets on a 1:00 flight. So now we have three hours in the terminal before we get to New York. I called our limo people to let them know of our delay.

So what’s the deal here? I ordered these online, everything was fine, they sent me tickets. How could they be canceled? And if they were, how was I not notified? And why the hell does BB&T not have people working on weekends when travel is heaviest??

Perhaps I could work on a few more pieces while I sit here. I need to find an outlet.