Little Victories

Red Mango was about the only thing that went right on the trip to Sacramento, which featured delays at every airport we were at. The inbound plane we were supposed to take to Midway from Philly was struck by lightning; we were glad to get a replacement, but the 40-minute delay turned into nearly five hours in total as rain kept us stranded (in the airport at first, but then on the tarmac). We almost didn't make it out at all, but an air traffic controller on our plane called a favor in and pushed us ahead of nearly 25 other planes. (They weren't so happy.)

Naturally this meant we missed the connection to Sacramento. We were offered no compensation from the airline for our discomfort, not even a hotel voucher. As I was calling Hertz to say that the reservation I made was going to be delayed a day, L unexpectedly made friends with an Army field medic (retired) who comped us a room with his frequent flier points. He works for the government yet, but flies for work—he has so many points he probably wouldn't have any way to use them all up...but his generosity was much appreciated.

The ordeal left me rather panicked, as Char was meeting up with us for J's wedding, and arrangements had to be made for her. Of course it all worked out okay in the end, but I was definitely pressured some in the respective airports. J really came through, though, and took care of everything that needed doing. L's advice on the hotels and such was also really good.

In any case, we were told by the gate agent on deplaning that we could definitely get out on a 10:30 flight, but if we wanted to try for an earlier one we could go standby. This seemed like a terrible choice because it was so early, but it had the advantage of getting us into Sacramento in time for the actual ceremony.

Unfortunately, flying standby apparently would have cost us about $490 apiece, a minor detail that the gate agent neglected to pass on—and that cost about three hours of extra sleep. I was NOT happy about getting up at 0445, getting a mostly terrible breakfast, and finding out that actually getting to the wedding on time would more than double the cost of getting there late. So late it was.

The flight out of Midway was delayed, and we sat on the tarmac again—for about an hour this time, instead of two. We made it into Sacramento right when the ceremony concluded and stumbled into the reception all of five minutes before the bride and groom. Char was there and managed to flag us down. We enjoyed about two hours of dodging some of the inlaws, making fun of the music, and mostly trying to calm down after the flight ordeal. Then it was back to the hotel, where we ate some food, chatted for awhile, and then made some lolreys:

The next morning, we had another pretty terrible breakfast (unless you made your own waffle; I didn't) and discovered that our flight into Philly was already delayed. At 0900. For a 1500 flight. Char was scheduled to leave around 1330 or so, and so we got to the airport around 1130. We made a pretty hasty goodbye of things when we realized that we were going to have a difficult time navigating between concourses (security and all) to have a proper send off. It was super abrupt, and that was kind of disappointing. But it worked out in the end, because...

... L and I walked to the desk and got the guy to give us new tickets. They routed us through Denver instead of Sin City, and it happened that Char was going that way, too. The concourses there are much more accessible, and so we had a couple hours to sit down and relax a bit with some food and Boggle and conversation.

This is when I found out that D, while competing in Trinidad, managed to save a girl's life after she was accidentally choked out in a grappling competition. While the details are a bit much for an already long blog post, suffice it to say that it was a lot nicer being on this side of a tough weekend than that one.

After real goodbyes in Denver (we were delayed again, of course—but only for about half an hour this time), we found ourselves finally en route to Home. When we were about to touch down (about 0045), I found myself feeling rather ill, mainly from exhaustion. I tried puking in the men's room for about an hour, but it didn't work out. L got the car and picked me up, and we drove off about 0230.

So I turned in about 0330 Monday morning. For all that it was, though, the objectives were met and a fairly good time was had. L was a champ the whole way through.


Lots of other things have been going on, too, but it's late. Church is canceled tomorrow on account of all the water (I think the church lost power), and so I took a bit of time tonight to write for the first time in awhile. Other items on the list of things include my surprise oldness celebration, K's bday, and a bit of unrest at work...but those stories will keep for another day.