For a long time I thought we had good luck traveling. But just recently I realized that our luck had changed and suddenly we have a long list of "cliche" travel stories.
A brief recap:
6 years ago - we were stuck on the tarmac in Amsterdam for 5 hours with the pilot intermittently announcing that we would be taking off in approximately 15 minutes. Finally, when the flight crew could sense mutiny afoot they put in the in-flight movie "Emperor's New Groove" and every single person on that plane sat down and watched it peacefully. We were ultimately put up in a nice hotel and flew out the next day.
2 years ago - There was the year that each flight we had arrived late so we were the crazy people running through the airport to make our connection, which, luckily they were late taking off so we made it everytime but one. The only one that left on time was the one we missed, which was good because that gave us time to eat. We had a direct flight to our home town that year. At the gate for this flight instead of the computer screen graphic with the destination listed there was a lined piece of paper taped to the blank screen with the words "Idaho Falls" written on it in ball point pen.
Last year our cat got sick the night before we left so we had to take him to the "Animal Hospital" and take advantage of the charity of quite a few of our friends to ensure his health. That year also featured delayed flights as a result of a huge storm over Denver and a drive from Salt Lake to Idaho Falls on Christmas Eve. The best part was the special Christmas Eve dinner of Cheetos, Beef Jerky and pudding purchased lovingly at the Flying J convenience store.
This year:
There was a light snow falling as we drove to the airport. That light snow resulted in a 3.5 hour wait on the runway during which 10,000 lbs of luggage was removed from the plane so that we could take off with slush on the runway. You guessed it, 200 lbs of that was our luggage. We were assured, and naively believed that our luggage would be put on a plane leaving an hour after we did and that it would be in Denver (and then Salt Lake) not long after we were. In reality, our luggage left Boston 36 hours after we did and then it went missing completely for a time before showing up mysteriously at the Idaho Falls airport just as Aaron and our "muscle" (our brother-in-law John) headed over there to do some thumping.
Thankfully, oh so thankfully, the return flight was smooth and non-eventful. However, both the drive from the SLC airport to Idaho Falls and the drive from Idaho Falls to the SLC airport were through blizzards...we really owe our parents for coming to get us.
See the weary travelers...
Tessa was an excellent traveler. On the 7.5 hour plane ride from Boston to Denver (should have been four) she slept well and rarely fussed. She was a bit less excited about the hour flight from Denver to SLC but I think she did wonderfully!
Okay - in this paragraph I was going to write about how on 3 of the 4 flights we had we sat next to college age girls who didn't say a word to us or Tessa the entire time. I was going to wonder if they thought there was such a great difference between themselves and me that they just couldn't cross the divide and then I was going to say "poo poo" on them for missing a great chance to meet the sweetest baby imaginable. However, then I realized that on 2 of the 3 flights that we sat next to young college age girls I was a coughing, snotty mess and perhaps to them I wasn't "that woman with the baby (roll eyes)" but instead "that coughing, snotty mess (roll eyes)" in which case I also wouldn't talk to myself. Yes, I was that person.
