Larry

[This is something old I wrote up while I was in Brazil]

It turns out I can't have an uneventful *set* of flights when Brazil is involved. My first flights to Brazil would be the most uneventful, I got earlier flights than I had booked. The next time I tried to fly, I flew out of Brazil, which since I booked through an agency outside Brazil I had to get paper tickets. The paper tickets didn't get to me in time, so I basically had to rebuy my tickets.

So this time, I learned my lesson, I bought the international tickets separate from my inside brazil tickets. This means I could get electronic tickets all the way. One problem is that I can't pay any of the Brazilian carriers directly since I don't have a Brazilian CPF. So a friend bought my ticket the day before I left. The ticket had a small problem, I had to go through Rio to get to São Paulo. I would have two hours between the flight from Rio to the flight to JFK. Unfortunatly the leg from Rio to São Paulo was an hour late and I had to run to get checked into to the flight to JFK. It turns out I had lost my seat, but I did get on the plane and wasn't the last one to check in. The way back to Belo Horizonte was supposed to be simpler, I had a lot of time in São Paulo before the direct flight to Belo Horizonte. Well, unfortunatly the boarding passes I was given was for Larry Morrison going to Lima, not for James Morrison going to São Paulo. It feels really bad that the woman who checked me in, used checked two pieces of ID, and the security guy who checked my boarding pass didn't notice this. I didn't notice this either since I had two boarding passes with the first one going to Miami. Anyway, so after Larry and I had the same seat on the flight to Miami we figured out I had the wrong ticket. I got the right one then we were off. We arrived in Miami in good time, but our gate was occupied, which meant we disembarked 20 minutes late and 10 of us had to push through the aisles to get out and onto the connecting flight to São Paulo. This flight was again uneventful. However, in São Paulo there was a nice long wait at customs, no processing time for me, then the discovery that I had made it to São Paulo, but my backpack hadn't. Fortunatly, there was a second flight from Miami arriving in 30 minutes (left 2 hours later than mine) that should have my bag. It turned out I did, so I could finally go check in for my flight to Belo Horizonte. That checkin was almost uneventful, but again the line took forever. I waited for 8 minutes as the second person in line. Again, I took no time getting processed. Given the time I take to go through customs and checking in, how could both those lines move so slow?