Adventures in Airports

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Alex dropped me off at the airport close to 5:30 a.m. and three hours later I was given a seat assignment. With the main cabin door closed I was pretty excited that I was getting a ride to Atlanta, but it's wise never to count one's chickens, as the saying goes. We sat on the runway for at least 20 minutes letting other planes go around us. Something was definitely wrong and when the captain came on to tell us we were having mechanical difficulties I got a little nervous. Those rides are never guaranteed until the plane is actually in the air and even then I prefer to be hundreds of miles away before I breathe a sigh of relief. The plane pulled into a parking lot the captain called a "holding area" of sorts and mechanics came out to check an overheated engine. After much paperwork and phone calls to Atlanta, we were finally cleared for takeoff, but you can imagine the nail biting that was going on as we all watched a large airport bus wait by the side of the aircraft...just in case!

Didn't get to see MaryAnne in Atlanta as she was working but did get to talk to her and found out that yesterday at work she delivered a baby girl on the side of the road! The ambulance was on its way to the hospital and MaryAnne was in the back monitoring the mother and when the baby crowned MaryAnne told the driver to pull over and voila! A new little baby girl was brought into the world. MaryAnne was very excited about it.

Okay, back to the airport, where flying standby has become one of my new thrills! We arrived an hour late into Atlanta but I had plenty of time to get on my scheduled flight at 7:30 p.m. The Delta customer service agent suggested I try for the earlier Salt Lake flight at 5:30 p.m. and so I listed for that and didn't make it along with about 10 other people and so we were all rolled into the 7:30 p.m. flight, which made the standby list extremely long and so many of us didn't make that flight either. There we all were, standing together in the airport wondering how we were going to get out of Atlanta. We had been told all flights to Salt Lake City were overbooked through Christmas and so we all began searching other cities close to Salt Lake and someone found a flight to Las Vegas leaving at 9:00 p.m. and we were ALL able to get on that flight and spent the next few hours playing Trivial Pursuit against each other at 35,000 feet. I lost. All 10 games. But I was thrilled to be heading west.

Once in Las Vegas at close to 11:00 p.m. we had a few options and most of us chose to stay in the airport and take our chances on the 6:45 a.m. flight into Salt Lake City this morning. It was a good call as we all got on that flight and landed in Salt Lake City just after 9:00 a.m. this morning. Sleeping at the airport wasn't so bad either, as we were allowed into the crew lounge to sleep (since most of us were crew) and since we had leather recliners and blankets it was a fairly good night's sleep. I'm glad to be home, though it was 14 degrees farenheight when we landed and my Durango was covered with snow!

In summary, Central America is a great place to spend a week and I'm looking forward to my next trip... maybe Panama, maybe Honduras, maybe back to Nicaragua...I won't really know until I'm booking the ticket at the very last minute with my backpack on the floor next to me, but I'll be sure and take you along for the ride!

Merry Christmas Friends & Family! I love you all!
Debbie

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