5/26/2010

Just get me to the East Coast Already!!!

If I have ever had a day of chaos, last Friday was the day.
I scheduled my flight for Friday so that I could get home and see my nieces and brothers and sister-in-laws before leaving for the cruise Sunday.  My original flight was supposed to leave St Louis at 6:55pm and have me to Philly by 9:20pm.  At work, we started noticing that the weather was looking pretty bad, and when we looked at the radar, there was a nasty storm on it's way.  I rescheduled my flights to make sure that I didn't get stuck in any delays or cancellations, and hopped on a flight at 1:50pm.  I had a layover in Orlando (talk about going out the way), which was really easy, but my first flight landed later than expected so the next flight was already boarding when I got to the gate.  No biggie....so I thought.
The major events begin....
-Once in the air headed for Philly, the pilot said that there were awful storms and he hoped that we wouldn't get stuck in holding.  Welp, sure enough we got stuck circling for 20 minutes, then without any updates, we started descending into the storm. There was thunder and lighting out of both windows, kids were crying, it was a mess. 
...it keeps getting better...
-We landed and were stuck on the tarmack for over 30 minutes waiting to find a gate that didn't have a plane sitting in it (no planes were allowed to take off or leave their gates because of the storm.) 
-When I was finally able to get off the plane, I called my mom to find out if she was close.  She was close....but she was sitting on the side of the highway with a dead car battery.  She had the car turned off, but had the key turned to run the air while she was waiting for my flight to land.  Needless to say, drained the battery and the car wouldn't start.    Took over an hour for someone to come and jump her.
....the icing on the cake of the day.....
- While I'm talking to mom about the car being dead, I am waiting and waiting and waiting for my luggage to come out onto the carousel.  After everyone on my flight had their luggage and I didn't....I headed for the luggage claims counter.  Yup....that's right.....my luggage didn't make it.  It was on a later flight from Orlando and wouldn't get in til 11:45pm. 

I was positive about the whole situation, so it was all fine.  The original flight that I was supposed to be on was cancelled, so I was just happy that I made it back east regardless of how long it took.  Southwest gave me a $50 flight voucher for the inconvenience, and we ended up just picking it up my luggage on our way to the cruise on Sunday.  Mom and I burst out laughing when she finally pulled up, and it is definitely a funny story to tell.....not so much then but definitely now. 

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