Donna Crawford
Redondo Beach, California

 
Bio:

I was born in North Carolina and lived there until I was about 2 or so.  My father was in the military, so we moved every year or two.  We lived up and down the east coast, in Arkansas, Germany and Kansas, before he retired in 1980.  I attended Manhattan High School (in Kansas) and college and law school at the University of Kansas (Go Jayhawks!!).

I've lived in Alabama, Georgia, Texas and California since leaving my parents' home.  I currently live in California with my husband Kirk (even while we were on our RTW, we considered California as home). My family and friends are scattered all over the place, as you can imagine.

My husband and I are highly involved with our church, locally. I have lots of hobbies, including cooking, HAM radio, reading, travelling, bzflag, and sports/outdoor activities. Although I love to watch Jayhawk Basketball, I generally prefer to participate. Some of my favorites are beach volleyball, scuba diving, cycling, rowing, swimming, snow skiing, tramping, surfing, off-roading, etc.

My travels over the last few years have taken me to Costa Rica, Hawaii, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and most recently, on a 15-country, 1-year round-the-world trip.

Feel free to drop me an email to let me know how you're doing, or any other suggestions you have for these pages! And be sure to sign my new Guestbook!

Recent Articles

Thursday, October 5

 

Airhead Grounded!

Ok, I know I joke alot about being blonde. I am, after all, blonde. But normally, not in the stereotypical sense of the word. I have common sense, I'm relatively intelligent, I can usually figure things out if I try hard enough (or at least I ask a lot of the right questions). This time, however, my blonde hair showed itself in full force and at a particularly bad time.

For the over 4 and 1/2 years that I've been married, Kirk and I have made plans to go and visit my mom a couple of different times. In over 4 and 1/2 years, we've never managed to make it happen. This year, we decided it would be - it HAD to be - a priority for us. So, we took a hard look at Kirk's work schedule, and we booked it. The trip, only three days, was crammed in the one weekend in October when he was both in town, and had an RDO (Friday off) day. It was sandwiched between a trip to Maui (with 4 days buffer before we left for Kansas) and a trip to Berkeley (leaving the morning after we fly home from Kansas).

Circumstances made this trip even tighter. The Maui trip got pushed and pushed and he finally left October 1 - the day he was to be coming home. As I type this, he is on a plane flying home from Maui. We are scheduled to leave at 6AM tomorrow for Kansas, returning around midnight on Sunday. Monday morning, early, we leave for Berkeley, returning on Friday. Sunday evening, he leaves for Australia.

In short, there is no room for error - especially not the error I made. Somehow, I managed to book our airline tickets (but not the car or hotel) to return at midnight on the 15th, not the 8th. Kirk would be arriving home late that night, missing both the Berkeley trip AND his flight to Australia. In short, it is not possible. I spent a long time on the phone with American while they searched for the cheapest available return flight - ultimately finding it would be $600+ PER ticket to change our tickets. That, too, is not practical (or affordable). Kirk is coming home three days early... for nothing.

My mom, who has been anticipating our visit for longer than I can imagine, is going to be severely let down. All because I lived up to the stereotype this once. All I can say is, I'm looking for the "good" in all of this, and I don't see it anywhere.

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Comments:
These things happen. Its why I check my flights 20 times before I'm confident they are booked properly. I've made far to many similar mistakes.
A friend of mine once booked a flight from Dallas to Newark CA only to discover upon landing in Newark PA that he was on the wrong side of the USA.
I had a return ticket on JAL refused by the airline once (while I was waiting in Kansai for a flight.) They actually paged me to the counter and took my boarding pass from me and said "too bad." I'll never use JAL if I have an option to this day.
Life is messy sometimes.
 
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Donna in Austria
Click for larger image Austria, August 2003