Travel Adventure

When we  get our Des Moines boarding passes at the automatic check-in kiosk, our names are mis-spelled. We are  now ”Carolg and Marlog.” A Des Moines security guard says something unintelligible about our name spellings at the security check-point and waves us in.

The Des Moines–Chicago–Miami legs are uneventful:  walk, wait, fly; walk, wait, fly.

In Miami, we walk 20 minutes from our American Airlines concourse to San Salvador’s Taca Airlines. A prim and perfect check-in clerk scans our passports and baggage claim tickets, then asks us to be patient. Something-or-other is going to San Salvador and back for checking.

“What is she sending?” I ask. Marlo doesn’t know.

“Are you checking our name spellings?” I ask.  I knew those typos to be trouble!

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, waving a petite hand to hold these two towering tourists at bay.

We wait.

She hands back our passports and baggage claim tickets. The machine spits out boarding passes, and she steps from behind the counter to award them to us.

“You worry too much,” she says to me, a Latino mother chiding a wayward daughter.

Marlo grins and nods.

She smiles back and continues.  Then she tells us that when her friend travels and things go wrong, he says, “What an adventure!”

“That is the way to travel,” she says. “It is all an adventure.” By now, I’m smiling too.

She hands us our boarding passes.  “You’ve been upgraded to first class—enjoy  your trip!