Something is Missing

I'm writing this from a villa high above Coral Bay on St. John, Virgin Island, having arrived here yesterday to start off our spring break vacation.  

It is wonderful here but something is missing. 

The views described in the villa advertising are as fantastic as promised. 

Last night the island sunset was as glorious as ever.

 There are still lots of little lizards to spot and try to catch.

And cows, donkeys, goats, chickens, and roosters still wander the island roads freely. 

We've tried out the pool and found it to be as great as we expected.

And Maho Bay beach is still white and smooth with interesting snorkeling.  I saw a big turtle!

We would be totally smiling except that something is missing.

We are missing John, Dawn, Michael, and Johnny who were all bumped from the flight yesterday! 

Yes, United overbooked the flight by fourteen people and Ben's brother and his family were left behind as the plane closed its door and flew away!  Incredible.  

I underlined the words I want to scream since I am on vacation and trying to take it easy and I'm mindful that you, my friends, do not want to hear me scream!

But oh my,  I still can't believe that an airline would purposefully overbook at flight on the first day of spring break going to a resort location.  And, apparently, it was perfectly legal!  Airlines regularly overbook and it seems to work out, I guess, on most flights, maybe because so much travel is for business.  But did United really think that anyone flying to St. Thomas at the beginning of spring break was going to jump up and take the $500 they were offered to be voluntarily bumped?

Well, no one did.  So that left John's family, who for some reason had been picked to be involuntarily bumped.  (The first hint of this was when they realized that they didn't have assigned seats.)  It didn't matter that they had bought their tickets in October or that they were part of a larger family group,  or that they had a pre-paid villa and a rented jeep waiting for them, or that they had arrived at the boarding gate two and a half hours before the flight.   There weren't seats for them and that was that.

Having the reality of this unfold, realizing there was nothing to stop it, and then flying off and leaving them behind was a very stressful way to start our own vacation.   While it is wonderful here and we are enjoying ourselves, it isn't the family vacation we had planned.  

The good new is that they are scheduled to arrive tomorrow afternoon, after which we'll get this party started!