Cutting It Toooooo Close

Christ, Travis and I aren't even out of the country and we are already screwing up. We meet at airport security and travel through to our gate where we stop and grab a beer and excitedly talk about how awesome life is. Our flight leaves at 6:05 and around 5:45pm I go and check that we are boarding so we could decide to get a beer or not. We were delayed until 6:57pm so I ran back and got more beers for us. We were right at the ends of this round when I got a call on my cell from an unknown number and I cautiously answer it. It's US Air and they were paging Travis and I because our flight was leaving - holy moly, it was 6:30pm, they were early! I grabbed our crap and ran into the bathroom where Travis was and yelled, "Travis, NOW, our flight is leaving!" We ran to the gate and the ladies told us our bags were almost taken off the plane and we were just in time. Christ! Who ever knew airlines would be early of all things? We got on, ordered some gin & tonics and relaxed, realizing we almost effed up before we even left the damn country. Close call but we eventually in Birmingham, and then continued on to Glasgow, where we arrived to chilly temps and rain (bloody hell).

We grabbed our baggage and headed to the car hire to collect our car for the duration of our stay. Travis was checking us in and our car wasn't available so we had to wait about 30 minutes for it. No problem, it's 10am so we head up to the restaurant and got a Scottish breakfast (wheeeeeeee!) and waited for our chariot to arrive. We went down again to the rental counter and our car still wasn't there so they offered us a Mercedes E-class car, but with a 1000 pound deposit and I almost considered getting it, but I wasn't to confident in driving this bad boy around without screwing it up some how so Travis said we would wait. An hour later Travis went to check on our reservation and the car was still not there or ready. It's now been 3 hours since we landed, we are in desperate need of some water and soap action, and we are starting to drink so we need a plan. Travis asked them to shuttle us to town and then drop the car off for us in the morning. The chickie had to check with her manager and was going to come get us at the pub when she had the details sorted out. She came over about 10 minutes later and said a car just arrived early so we could take that! Yes, things do work out in the end don't they? The branch manager, Jen, was so apologetic about us waiting and for our trouble, she discounted our rental by 50%, without us even asking for anything! Needless to say, that was very cool, mainly because if this same scenario played out in Philly, people would just not care if I had a car. After waiting for the car for a small bit longer, we got in and began the journey towards Glasgow and our home for the next two days.

It was a bit hairy, but we finally got there just in time to dump our crap in the room and head out to the bar for the Heineken Cup grand final. We were told by several people to go toe the Aussie pub 'Walkabout' for the match so we relented and went, but I was hoping for a Scottish pub, because "when in Rome..." We watched, we drank VB and then we tooled around a bit before spectacularly crashing that night and sleeping the sleep of queens. We are in Scotland baby!