Karmic roller coaster.

So I got on the 4:15 plane to DC. Met up with Casey and Jess. We then went to list ourselves on the 9:30pm flight to London. It looked very full, and both my friend and the agent we spoke with said it didn’t look like we would get on that flight, but we could try. It was the last flight of the day so if we didn’t get on we would stay in a hotel (which she reserved for us at a discounted “distressed traveler” rate) and catch one the next day.
We inquired what happened to our luggage since the agent in Austin told us our bags would go straight through to London with or without us. The agent in DC said that due to new security measures no bag could ever travel without it’s corresponding passenger on board, so our bags would have been pulled off when we didn’t get on the previous London flight. She checked on our bags and they were indeed in DC with us. They usually need 2 hours to get the bags arranged to go on the next flight when they’ve been pulled like ours were, and the next flight was only an hour or so away, but she said they would try to get them on. We asked what would happen if they didn’t get on, and she said that in that case we couldn’t go on the flight due to the no bags without people rule.
We waited around even though we knew we probably wouldn’t get on a flight until the next day. As everyone was loading, they called us up to the counter, and to our surprise, gave us a choice of several seating arrangements. Jess and I sat together on a 2 seat aisle, and Casey just a few seats away. Score! I called as we were in line and canceled our hotel reservation.
The flight was all right. We watched Mystic River, and didn’t really manage to get any sleep unfortunately. We arrived at Me-row (Heathrow) and went to get our bags. Long time. No bags. Empty carousel. No bags. Jess went to check on them. They were in DC. She filled out some paper work, and they said they would send them on and deliver them the next day (which they just did a few minutes ago as I write this.) So the first agent was wrong in that they didn’t go straight through, and the second agent was double wrong in that we did get on the plane without our luggage, and they did send it along anyway even though we were not on that flight.
We had a good time on our first day though I was falling asleep (literally) at several of the pubs/cafes we stopped at, and we finally went to bed after something like 40+ hours of being awake.
More details later. This was intended to be just a quick and non-entertaining update, but it has instead turned into quite a long but still devoid of the effort to make it entertaining update. We’re here, we have bags, and all is right with the world for the moment.