a really bad mistake I made while traveling

I've traveled rather successfully for many years now. I like to think that I know a fair bit more about the travel process despite how ever-changing it is just based on the fact that I have been doing it for a long time.

There was one time though that I made a very costly mistake and once I figured it out I felt so damn stupid about it. It ended up costing me about $1000 as well.

I was in Japan and booked a flight back to the USA, I don't remember exactly what day it was but it was something mid month during off-peak season in an effort to get cheaper tickets, which normally works if you have the patience to wait a few days since at these times the airlines don't always depart several times a day.

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The above picture is kind of how I felt once I discovered my error and I didn't really know what to do immediately.

Let's get into my idiocy shall we?

Well the ticket said my departure time was 00:15 on the 24th of May (completely made up date but it doesn't matter, it could be any day) and for whatever reason the AM/PM in my mind didn't register properly and my dumb ass turned up at around 10PM on the 24th hoping to get a jump start on my flight that was departing just after midnight. I was delighted when I arrived at a mostly empty airport.

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I was a little bit happy when I arrived at my ticketing counter only to find it almost completely empty. Hooray! Right? I get to go straight to the front and don't have to feel like a cow in a feed line!

Well my chipper attitude got destroyed when I got to the front and found out that my flight was not departing in 3 hours as I had hoped. In fact, my flight had left the airport a cool 21 hours prior to me getting in line.

I am sure most of you can see what the problem is here and I felt like a real moron once I realized it too. We all know that as soon as the clock strikes midnight it is now the following day. The ticket lady knew this, the airline knew this, children know this, I knew this. For some reason my mind didn't register this when I was making my travel plans though and I am standing in line for a ticketing counter that doesn't even have any flights until many hours later, with my printout in hand for a flight that left yesterday.

I didn't bother pleading with the ticketing agent because I know they are powerless and they also don't issue additional tickets to idiots who arrived at the airport on the wrong day.

This is part of the reason why there are no flights that depart exactly at midnight because I don't think there are very many people that are aware that midnight, is technically the first minute of the next day, it is not the day previous.

My situation doesn't get that much sympathy though because you should know that any time after 00:00 is in fact, the following day.

I had to book a last minute ticket, one-way to NYC, that cost over $1000 and this was a huge kick in the butt to me because I was traveling rather frugally at the time.

This isn't really a piece of advice because I don't think that many people out there are dumb enough to have this happen to them. I am not dumb enough either. If anything it was one of those situations of "travel arrogance" where I had been traveling for so long at that point that I didn't pay good enough attention to my flight details and it got registered in my brain incorrectly.

I'll tell you one thing though: This will NEVER happen to me again. I can't afford it!