This year, I did not have the best luck with air travel. When I flew home this summer with Aerobell Airlines for my baby shower, I developed a raging bladder infection the night before. In the wee hours of the morning before my flight I was pacing back in forth in tears, trying to manage the pain (bladder infections are painful to begin with, BEFORE you add the 6 months-preggo-factor). My midwife had to call in a prescription to a 24 hr. Walgreens, where I picked it up at 5 am. Utterly miserable, I made it to my flight on zero hours of sleep.
I was nervous about several things when preparing for this trip out to CA for the New Year. It was our first time traveling with Gregory and we didn’t know how he’d do. I was worried about germs in the airport. I was worried we would forget things that we needed. To combat these foes, I meticulously wrote list after list. I was 95% packed TWO DAYS before the trip, and spent the rest of the time getting the house ready for when we got back– pumping extra bottles of milk for Jesse to feed G while I teach piano, washing all of our cloth diapers, helping to groom Claire for her dog-sitter, cleaning out the fridge, doing 6 loads of laundry.
Ironically, my preparations were to no avail.
It all started with our flight leaving DFW. They warned us that things were running about an hour behind, seeing as all the planes coming to Dallas from Denver needed to be de-iced. Personally, I think it’s silly that they didn’t plan ahead for this. Um, hello? Colorado in December? Did you think it would be sunny?
But they assured us that if our plane was running behind, others would be as well, so we probably wouldn’t miss our connecting flight. Plus, they said, if we didn’t get out of Dallas TONIGHT, we probably wouldn’t find another flight until the 4th of January, seeing as this is the busiest time of year and everything was already booked solid.
So we got on our plane to Denver, hoping for the best. We asked several flight attendants what the status updates for flights were, but everyone was pretty clueless.
The moment we stepped off the plane in Denver, the -2 F degree weather hit us like a brick wall. COLDNESS. There was even ice and snow in the indoor tarmac tunnel! Good thing we’re only staying here for an hour! I thought to myself.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
As we got off the plane, a lady was standing by the gate. “What’s your final destination?” she asked. “Santa Barbara”, we responded. “Gate B 19” she said. Off we went, hoping to catch our flight. The gate was about a 10 minute walk, but we RAN, despite 4 carryon bags and an infant!
But the gate was completely deserted when we arrived. Not “just missed the flight” deserted, but utterly abandoned. We flagged down an airline employee and asked about the flight. “It left 1/2 hour ago”, she explained. She had radioed in for them not to send any passengers that way.
Discouraged, we asked what we should do. She said that we would need to get re-routed at the Customer Service desk. Where’s that? we asked. Oh. RIGHT back where we had gotten off the plane.
Of course, by the time we got back, we were the last people in line. Jesse stood there, while I took G off to the side to try and nurse him, as by this time it was 11pm Dallas time and he was due for his last nighttime feeding. He wouldn’t eat, however. I think it was all the noise in the airport, but something was really throwing him off. I’ve learned not to fight him, however, because if I make him eat when he doesn’t want to, he just spits it all back up anyways! Soon, however, he became really tired and started screaming. The bright lights and noises of an airport are NOT what he’s used to when it comes to falling asleep! Jesse couldn’t help me since he was holding our spot in line (I said we were last in line– by this time there were 2 others behind us, 25 in front of us). I couldn’t believe it– people were actually CHUCKLING as they walked by! What, is it FUNNY to see a mother, all by herself, surrounded by bags with a screaming infant? Karma’s a bitch, was all I could think, while trying to stay positive. I got to ring in the New Year by hearing a few people around the airport cheering.
After 2.5 hours of waiting in line, Jesse called me by cell and told me to come wait with him in line since he was almost to the front. We wanted “sympathy” points. It was now 1am (2am Dallas time). The lady at the desk said that they could re-route us through US Airways with a flight leaving for Phoenix at 6am, headed to Santa Barbara thereafter. We decided that even though there were later flights,we should get on the earliest one possible in the event that something got cancelled or delayed.
What this meant, however, was that there wasn’t enough time to get a hotel. We would have had to be back at 4:30am to go through security, and by this time it was 1:30am. They advised that we spend the night here at the airport. “People do it all the time”, they said. Yeah, but do they do it with a 10 week old infant? I thought to myself.
One of the ladies who was super kind went searching and brought us out a yoga mat and an airline blanket. She also showed me that it was darker and a little quieter if you go behind one of the ticket counters. So, after a quick trip to McDonalds (it was the only thing still open), we “set up camp”, using every spare jacket we had to make a little bed for us all. Luckily, all of G’s stuff was in one of our carry-ons– in fact, pretty much the only thing we checked was MY stuff. I was kicking myself for that later, because I had packed my big down jacket and a nice fluffy blanket. Oh, what we would’ve given for those two items!
Anyways, we were able to swaddle G and curl up around him to keep warm. The airport, while not as freezing as outside, was still pretty dang cold. And we were LAYING on our jackets, so there wasn’t a lot we could do there. Needless to say, we didn’t get a lot of sleep. We woke up at around 5am, went to the bathroom in shifts, packed up our stuff, and headed to our gate. Unfortunately, sleeping on the cold ground had kicked all of my sinus issues into gear, so my throat was incredibly sore and my head felt like a balloon. This wasn’t a huge problem until we were in the air– all of a sudden, I felt like my head was going to explode! I was very uncomfortable for the rest of the flights.
We arrived at Santa Barbara not too much worse for wear. While we were waiting for my dad, we went to the baggage area to claim my suitcase.
It wasn’t there.
Frontier Airlines never transferred my bag to US Airways, so it was still back in Denver. I started realizing the implications of this– I had only the clothes I had been wearing since Friday morning. It was now New Years Day, and nothing was open.
I decided to take a deep breath. So far, God had destroyed every meticulous plan of mine. I wanted to mitigate the germs G was exposed to by having lots of sanitizer? Instead, we spent the night on the airport floor. I had everything packed JUST SO in my bag. Instead, it never even made it with us to CA. So I decided to just give up trying to control things. I started calling it my “Roll With the Punches Kelly”. My Dad later remarked that he had never even met this person 🙂
After a nice little breakfast at the only restaurant open in SB (other than Denny’s…), we were on our way home. Luckily, my mom was able to postpone the big family brunch she had planned for us into the evening,so we were able to relax, take off our shoes and get showers before everyone arrived. We found out that Target was open, so my mom Janelle and I went shopping for things like toothbrushes and deodorant, since those were a few of the things we had packed in my suitcase.
As far as the status of this suitcase, when we checked last the lady said it would be arriving on a flight into SLO airport last night, and that I should be getting it shortly thereafter. In the meantime, I’ve been borrowing Janelle’s clothes (luckily, we now wear the same size! Yay for having a sister!). So, as long as I get my stuff today, there shouldn’t be any harm done. My mom had given me nice new Uggs for Christmas, so I’ve been wearing those around, completing the new “7th Grade” fashionista outfits I’ve been sporting 🙂
Yes, 2011. We’re off to a good start indeed!
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