In November, Aaron and I decided in November that we should take a cruise.  Then we proceeded to plan our trip in our traditional fashion, which is to say we didn’t plan our trip until Mid-December.  By that point the cruise was pretty much off the table since the original reason for the cruise was because it would be cheap and easy no longer applied.

So somehow we ended up deciding on the Bahamas.  Now I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t know anything about the Bahamas except that it was someplace south, warm, and a lot of cruise ships stopped there.  But after DC’s mighty snowstorm and the random snowstorm that showed up on Christmas Eve at my parent’s house in Dallas, I was ready for something warm.  Additionally, like many people, I find that New Year’s in the District of Columbia, or really any major city, can be more stress and annoyance than fun.  There’s competing parties, the instinct to party-hop means you end up having no fun at any parties, there are never any cab, its like the worst of what Catherine Andrew’s calls the “Something Better syndrome.”  Well not this year.

So we booked our trip (I used points, $89, totally worth it) and fast-forward to December 29th where I pulled my usual travel routine.  And by usual I mean Adam and Aaron’s Patented Recipe for Flying (well patent pending).  I had a 6am flight and I left DC at 4:15am.  Which seems like a lot of time except my flight was from Dulles was at 6:00am.  And this was also 1) an international flight and 2) at the height of the holiday season post underwear bomber.  As I got closer to Dulles, I kept looking at the clock and swearing.  My original plan to park in economy parking ($10 a day) was thrown out of the window in the interest of time, I was now arriving at 4:50am and couldn’t spare the time it would take to get there.  So it was daily parking for me ($17 a day, ugh) and if I was any later, I might have to go hourly ($37 a day, more than my plane ticket).  I arrived at daily parking, got stuck behind a shuttle bus, parked somewhere in garage 2 (that’s important for later, not I don’t recall or write down exactly where I parked) and sprinted out of the garage.  There were no parking shuttles in sight so I started jogging to the terminal.  I should note it was FREEZING cold (the sun had yet to come up) and I was wearing my large REI hiking backpack.  Thankfully a kind rental car shuttle pulled over and offered me a ride to the terminal.  It was now almost 5am and I needed to check my bag in the next 15 minutes to make the “must check bags 45 minutes before a flight leaves” rule.  The other woman on the rental car bus noticed the wild panicked traveling late look in my eyes (patent pending, BCC Consulting) and looked away.  We arrived at the American Airlines check-in and I leaped out only to find…an hour + wait to check bags.  This was not going to work, not even a little bit.  I ran outside to try and check my bag outside but the computer had crashed.  I was screwed.

Or was I?

In the long history of audacious travel moves, there’s one I had not used in a while.  It was mythical in its origins, a legend in most traveling circles.  I was going to pull the checked-bag to carry-on conversion.  I cut the line to a ticket machine (over the protests of a family), printed my boarding pass and sprinted to security.  Along the way, while running, I took out my contact solution and other items and tossed them in the trash can, cinched down the straps on the hiking backpack as tight as I could, and hoped no one would questions my ability to carry-on the bag.

The key was in clearing security.  Once I made it past security it wouldn’t matter if I was told at the gate that I couldn’t carry-on the bag and that I would have to gate-check it.  That had been the original goal.  Still given the bags size, it was an audacious plan.

I cleared security in record time for Dulles (it being 520am helped) and made my way onto the people mover and the plane.  The counter agent didn’t even blink as I hauled my backpack past.  I was clear, though having cut it too close even by my standards.  Next stop, Miami and then Nassau.

Part II: Renting a car in North Eleuthera and adventures on Harbour Island.