Travel tales

Just got back from the trip to DC for my nephew's wedding. The time in DC was great - got to see almost all the family - just missed one nephew on Russ' side. Great to see everyone, and we really had good visits. We also accomplished the 2 main goals of introducing new members of the family, since Gaea hadn't met any of them except my nephew and his (now) wife. Needless to say, everyone loved her.

Travel was a different story. For Russ and Karis and me, the trip out wasn't bad - delayed flight in the morning, but we still made the connection in Chicago and got in on time. Jason and Gaea had a harder time - their outbound flight was delayed longer, and missed a couple of connections, so they got in 4 hours late.

Then there was driving in DC area traffic. It was raining all weekend, and of course, traffic there is usually horrible. Everything took quite a bit longer than expected.

But the trip back was the worst. It sounded pretty good at first - Jason and Gaea got on our outbound flight as standby. But then, they got taken off again and put back on their original flight. Then we were told our flight might be cancelled and we should all line up to re-book flights in case it was. Next they told us they were cancelling the flight because a toilet and backed up and they were worried about unsanitary conditions. So we started working on rebooking. They told us they could get all 3 of us (Russ, Karis and me) on a flight to Chicago out of BWI, but couldn't get Russ and me back to Chicago. And the flights tomorrow were booked, too. So we got a taxi voucher, gave Jason the keys to my car that was in the airport lot, and started to leave.

Jason came after us and told us they had fixed our plane, and now it would just leave late. So we got back on the original flight, which now left about 1 1/2 hours late. Worked well for Karis - she caught her bus at 2:30 and got back to Beloit at a decent time. Russ and I raced from B terminal to C to try to catch our flight home, but they had already filled all the seats and closed the doors.

They had already told us all flights were booked solid, and the lines at all the Customer Service counters were very long. We thought about putting our names on stand-by list after stand-by list, but then decided it would be less frustrating to just rent a car one-way to Minneapolis and drive. So we left Chicago at 2:30, stopped at Jason's to pick up my car, and got home about 10:30. Just 14 hours after we left DC.... No, 15 - I forgot about the time change.

I'm tired and think I'll go to bed now... Wish I could take tomorrow off!