(this is Portland, OREGON, FYI)

From Cyndi Ball: 

Whoops!

So what is the difference between PWM and PDX? 

About 3,186.4 miles plus stops for bathroom breaks!

And if you're asking "What's the significance of this fact?" and "What the heck do those letters mean?", well, let me just tell you ... 

Those letters make a HUGE difference if you're booking flights home from Portland, OREGON!

My sister-in-law asked to see our arrival times AND our departure times from the airport. I went to my inbox and pulled up the emails from Southwest. I looked over the itineraries since we were leaving the next day. All good for going out ... and WHAT??

Must be a mistake. I checked through ALL the Southwest emails and yep, I'd accidentally booked our flight home from Portland, MAINE! Which meant, in reality, we'd have to drive 3186.4 miles just to catch our flight home back to Atlanta.

My heart started racing since we were due to board the plane TO Portland, OR in less than 24 hours. I called Southwest Airlines and waited on hold for 25 minutes - it seemed like an eternity!

"Hello, Southwest Airlines Customer Service, my name is Sarah, how may I help you?"

"My name is Cyndi and I've done the most embarrassing thing ever and I really hope you can help me!"

"Oh, I'm sorry and I'm sure we can help you. What's the situation?" 

"Well, tomorrow morning my friend and I are boarding the plane TO Portland, Oregon." 

"Uh, huh ..."

"And then the next Monday, we're supposed to fly home FROM Portland, Oregon but ..."

She started to chuckle.

"And let me guess, you booked your flight home from Portland, MAINE."

"YES!!! That's exactly what I did!"

"Not a problem; we can fix that for you."

I got the feeling perhaps, maybe, I wasn't the only one who'd done such a harebrained thing like this before.

I wanted to hug the woman through the phone! And the crazy thing was, the flight was only getting in an hour later than the flight from Maine. And at 12:45 in the middle of the night it really makes no difference! It's still really, really late!

So we will be home on Monday night (very early Tuesday morning) arriving from Portland, OREGON.

So thankful I don't have to drive those 3,186.4 miles just to catch a flight home. ;)

(Click here for the next post in the series.)