The Return

The return was the worst part of the entire trip…

We woke up at 5:30am on Monday morning to get ready for our first flight of the day. We caught our Uber at around 6:20am and headed to the Las Vegas airport. After some difficulty checking in, we headed through security. Now, you’re probably wondering, what’s so significant about security that there is more than one sentence of it. Well, that’s because both of our bags got flagged and security opened them up. For my bag, it was the slogan roll. I’m not sure why it got flagged, but for a second, I thought he was about to open it and show my BTS banner to the entire airport. Also, I refused to fold up the glorious Samsung poster, so I rolled it up and carried it. Of course, this meant it had to go through the scanners and it decided to get stuck on the conveyor. Luckily, one of the guards got it out and returned it to me.

After the security fiasco, we waited in the airport for our flight to LA. My mom stood in this ridiculous Starbucks line to get something for us to eat as we hadn’t eaten anything since we woke up. Finally, half an hour later, we got some cakes and made our way to the gate where we sat down to eat. Some other people sat in front of us and all of a sudden, my mom leaned over to me and asked, “isn’t that the guy from the concert?” And yes, it was. Somehow, we had ended up on the same flight as the guy who sat beside us at the concert. In fact, half of our tiny LA flight was people from the concert–you could tell by all the BTS merch. Our boarding time finally came and another unfortunate announcement had approached. All the bags had to be checked as the plane was too small for overhead carry ons. As we walked towards the gate, the lady informed us of this and she took our bags. I didn’t want to let my bag go, especially my merch bag. Knowing connection flights, bags easily get lost. I had heard stories from so many family and friends that I was not about to let this highly valuable merch bag go. Unfortunately, I had no power in the situation and the lady took the bag from me.

Despite everything, the flight to LA was really chill. It was so short that I didn’t really do anything. I was also really looking forward to being in LA air again. The last trip we went on before the pandemic was to LA and it was the best trip of my life–before Vegas obviously. I just looked out the window onto the desert terrain below and the flight was already done. We landed in LAX and the airport was absolutely rammed with people. We already had bad experiences in the LA airport from our last trip. The first time we went to LA, there were so many people and our flight got cancelled. It was also the beginning of the pandemic so we really just wanted to leave. However this time, the experience was much worse as we couldn’t leave the terminal, or we would have to go through security all over again.

So, we decided to get something to eat and joined this gigantic line to get a sub. Half way through the line, they announced they only had ham and turkey, which was fine because that is what we wanted. But, that just shows how busy the airport was. As we were getting our subs, the lady that worked at the sub place asked if we were coming from Vegas as she had seen our PTD shirts. We said yes and she asked us how the concert was. Of course, we said it was amazing and she said that Coachella was going on which is why the airport was busy. After grabbing our subs, we went to this small upper floor which was much quieter than the floor below. We ate and then calmed ourselves down by rewatching our concert videos once again.

From where we were sitting, we could see a whole mess of people around our gate. The Vancouver flight before us was delayed, meaning our flight was even further delayed. To make it worse, due to technical difficulties, we were unable to choose our seats on the flight and we ended up with two seats apart from each other. For me, this was a catastrophe. I would have to sit with someone I didn’t know. As an introverted, shy person, that was terrifying. Luckily, I got seated beside a nice older couple who didn’t say a word to me the whole flight. My mom was seated with two Coachella goers who were probably my age. Anyways, in my peaceful seat, I just continued my Jungkook drawing until we landed.

Landing in Toronto was another disaster, but honestly, the Toronto airport is always a disaster. We landed and got the news that we would have to wait on the plane because the customs hall was too busy–as always. Only people who had connecting flights could leave the plane. This caused some–drama. Some people didn’t understand that they weren’t allowed off the plane and some really rude people were literally arguing with them and laughing at them because they didn’t understand. It was such a mess but we finally got off the plane and entered the chaotic customs hall. If you’ve never been to the Pearson customs hall, be thankful because I swear everytime we go in there it is a mess. They have gigantic machines that are supposed to do the customs quickly. However, the machines either aren’t working or people have no idea how to use them. Both of which slow down the process. We luckily got to a machine and did our customs. We headed through the line and got to the customs officers who were just doing an express version of their usual questions. Thankfully, they didn’t ask us how much money we had spent because we had no receipts and we did not want to admit how much money we had spent on merchandise–after all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

In the end, we made it out of the airport in one piece and stepped outside into Toronto air. As we looked outside, we were greeted by snow… in the middle of April. We were definitely home…