Thursday, January 22, 2009

Traveling isn't always easy

So, hubby and I take off from our home on Monday (MLK day) 1 day prior to the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama, for our trip to the sunny west coast. Things were easy until we hit the MetroRail system to head to the airport. Their were MASSIVE crowds of people of all races and ages in line purchasing tickets to ride into the district for the festivities for MLK and the inauguration. Fortunately, we made our flight on time regardless of the lines due to quick thinking and purchasing an extra SMARTtrip card vs. waiting through the line for a passenger fare card. (Phew).

At the airport, our flight was delayed for 45 minutes (which we found out it was delayed due to a flight attendant's tardiness to work in a prior city). Just our luck. Our connecting flight was in NY at JFK and there was only a little over an hour before our 2nd flight was to take off. We arrived at the terminal to board our next flight with 6 minutes to spare. Which seemed to be ON TIME! So we board the plane are pushed out for DE-ICING as it had begun snowing and was 32 degrees at JFK. About 20 mins later, the captain comes on and informs us that we must be pulled back into the gate as there is a problem with the load that the plane is carrying. So a LOAD MASTER had to come on, remove the cargo and baggage and reposition. 2 hours later, we were allowed to push back out for de-icing. :O

We finally were able to get in flight and then there was the screaming baby and the singing lady across the aisle from us. The flight finally reached our destination only to discover our luggage never made it to the plane at JFK. --FANtastic. sigh! It was a long day.

The hotel though is awesome though. Breakfast has been really good, dinner with beer and wine (free) is provided. YAY!