The journey home: a series of close calls

When Monica asked me what time I needed to leave her house, I told her 5:00am, so I could be at the rental car place by 5:30 and in the airport terminal around 6 for our 7:10am flight. Someone that got all discombobulated in my mind and I set my alarm for 5:00am and was out the door shortly before 5:30. It wasn't until I got on the road that I realized that I had already wanted to be there! Yikes!

Don't worry. I remained calm. I didn't even speed (much). I called the rental car place and they assured me it wouldn't take long to check me out (it didn't). However, there was a bit of a wait for the shuttle to the terminal. (trying not to panic)

Thank goodness I had 1) already checked in and 2) only packed carry-on luggage. There was quite the crowd around the airline counter so I think that if I would have had to wait and check a bag I would have been sunk. Getting through security, thankfully, didn't take an extraordinarily long time, though they did have to look at my lunch individually because of a super dangerous fruit cup!

We got to the gate just as the plane was boarding. Phew! On the plane, ready to go, the pilot speaks over the intercom to let us know we are next in line to take off. A minute later, he comes back on to tell us we are heading back to the gate because of a fuel filter problem. "It will be about 10 minutes"

The next hour went something like this: "It will be about 10 minutes for the maintenance staff to check out the problem."
"It will be about 10 minutes for the maintenance staff to come back with a new fuel filter."
"It will be about 10 more minutes while they fix the part."

I had a pretty long lay-over (1 hour 40 minutes) but I was getting more and more nervous as it was an hour past when we were supposed to leave, then an hour and 15 minutes, then an hour and 25 minutes. We got in the air at 8:38.

Luckily, when we arrived at our connection, we were at Gate A13, and the next flight left at A19 so I didn't have to run all over the airport and jump on and off the train/people mover thing. I arrived at the gate and had literally 90 seconds before boarding began. Good think I packed a lot of snacks because there was absolutely no time to get anything at the airport.

Sierra was pretty good on both flights. She slept a little bit on each one, but the second flight she was definitely getting a little antsy. She squawked a little bit and wiggled and squirmed a lot, but we again had seats to ourselves, so it was okay (good thing she was relatively calm on the first flight because otherwise the guy next to us would have been kicked a lot more than he was!).

Jason arrived at the airport just as we did, so that worked out nicely and since we wouldn't arrive back at Woodberry in time for dinner, we had a family date. I really needed some real food after pretty much snacking all day! Sierra napped a little on the way home, and then didn't go to bed until 9:30, but that's okay; I anticipate it will take her a day or so to adjust back to Eastern time.