The Longest Day

Our very long travel day began quite early. Audrey and I woke up at 4:30 AM to get ourselves and the kids ready for our 6:45 AM flight from Idaho falls to Salt Lake City. Grandpa, Grandpa, and Aunt Heather took us to the airport in the morning and helped us get our four bags and a car seat through security and helped wrangle our children up to the security line. The first hiccup of the day: AJ's milk tested positive for explosives, so I got the pat down, and they had to search our bag by hand. As I was getting patted down, I looked up to see AJ and Nathan going up and down the escalator as fast as they could while Audrey is trying to get them together. Just as she get Nathan under control, AJ bolts, running out of sight. The flight to Salt lake was uneventful, and the kids were fairly well behaved. When we got to SLC, though, we began to get a little worried. 

There was very little visibility, and the runway was pretty snowy when we landed. Uh oh. We landed late after circling  for 10 minutes (only one of the three runways was open because of the snow) so we rushed to our connecting flight. Well, maybe "rushed" isn't the right word. We stopped at Jamba juice and got a smoothie, and got a turkey sandwich for Audrey on the flight (it cost $7.69 for a plain turkey sandwich!). After boarding the airplane, this was our view out of the airplane window.

 

After about 30 minutes, the pilot came over the PA and announced that all three runways were closed, and that the plows could not keep up with the heavy snow. We were going to be allowed to deplane if we wanted to, but we decided to stay on the plane, since the kids were contained and watching TV on the headset TVs (Hooray for the 767).

Eventually, they announced that all passengers had to deplane. So we were left to find a place in the crowded terminal. We ended up sitting by a closed down TSA station, in an area of the terminal where the boys could run around a bit. AJ took about 3 minutes to figure out how to climb the gate, and we had to collect him off of it multiple times. AJ also foreshadowed the upcoming nightmare by bolting when no one was watching him. If you looked at your phone, or at Tessa, when you looked up he would be 20ft away running at top speed. We REALLY wished (not for the last time) that we had some carabiners and rope, so that we could tether him to the wall.

 After a 2 hour ground stop and more Jamba Juice, they told us that the snow had let up a little, and we were going to try to fly out. We boarded again, and it looked like our trip would have only a small hiccup that would not even be worth mentioning on our blog.

WRONG!!

 The kids just wanted to sit with their Mommy, so I had three seats to myself.

The announcements had been made, the safety message had been given, seatbelts buckled, we waited for about fifteen minutes until... the customer service representative boarded the plane to tell us that our airplane had mechanical problems and that we were going to be moved to terminal C6  to wait for another aircraft to take us to Atlanta.

the pushback got stuck in the snow pushing back another aircraft

I think that I lost part of my sanity in terminal C6. When we arrived, the man behind the desk told us not to get too excited, because the plane at the gate was going to Cabo. In the 8+ hours that we sat in our little corner of C6, we watched the Cabo flight board and depart, then another flight arrive, board, and depart for Cincinnati. Our only other option was to reserve a seat on a flight to Atlanta that was leaving on Sunday (the 19th was a Thursday). So we waited and waited and waited. Eventually, we got all three children to nap at the same time (miracles do happen).

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 At about this time, C6 began to feel like that train terminal on Dr. Zhivago, filled with desperate travelers that just want out of purgatory. Eventually, they made an announcement that brought some light to the end of the tunnel. Good news: There would be a flight coming in to take us to Atlanta; Bad news: it was just leaving Atlanta to come pick us up. Much like peppermint patty and the football, they would snatch our departure time from us just as we approached it over and over. I decided to go get lunch, and I ate at a Greek place where I got Shishkabobs, rice, pita bread, french fries a side salad, and a drink, for $9.75 (Are turkeys an endangered species in Utah? HOW CAN ONE SANDWICH COST SO MUCH! During one AJ escape attempt, audrey's sandwich got flipped over, and she only got to eat half it before the other half got ground into the carpet. During another escape attempt (If this was a POW camp, AJ would be Colonel Hogan and I would have been Sergeant Shultz) AJ bolted and made it across the walkway, onto another gate, and down the jetway of another flight. The flight attendant had to run after him and tackle him.  Since the airport was still partially shut down, our plane couldn't land for the longest time, so we just watched the time tick by and got exercise by chasing AJ up and down the aisle when he decided to escape.

At about 7:30PM, the gate worker told us that our flight had arrived, but it was going to arrive at a different gate. There was a mad dash to gate D2 (where we began this adventure) and when we arrived, the gate was in uproar. The flight had been cancelled, and long soviet breadlines had formed at the desk to get hotel arrangements and connecting flights. Either AJ or Tessa or both were crying during this period. Eventually, we got our room, meal vouchers, and were sent off to our hotel. Our flight would depart at 10:00 the next morning. We don't have any pictures of any of this because we were so sick of the airport we couldn't imagine want to immortalize it. (I hope that you are laughing or enjoying this, and it doesn't just sound like griping. Someday, we will read this to our kids and laugh about how miserable it was). We got a hotel shuttle at 9:30 p.m., and went to bed ready for a better tomorrow.

I woke up to an email alert that our flight had been delayed to 11:00 AM. The shuttle was full until 10:00, and since we didn't want to be stuck at the airport for hours and hours again, we decided to get a taxi. This is the low point of our story. Let me give you a piece of advice. DON'T TRY TO GET A TAXI IN SLC. I called every taxi company on the internet and NONE OF THEM WOULD ANSWER THEIR PHONE!!!! I am still angry about this. How can taxi companies exist without answering the phone to arrange pickups? Is the taxi infastructure in SLC a hoax meant to enrage the denizens that are marooned in it's airport hotels? Audrey and I ended up fighting about it in front of the kids (we both got scolded by them. Nate kept saying "be nice to each other" and AJ ran up to me and yelled "DADDY STOP IIIIIIIIITTTT." In my viking bezerker mode, I am not sure if I remember this correctly, but I think that a family prayer was said, and the flight ended up getting delayed to 11:45 (meaning that the 10:00 shuttle would get us to the airport on time).

The milk tested positive for explosives again (what is in AJ's sippy sup? Is that why he is so crazy? Are we feeding him dynamite milk?) Audrey got the pat down this time, but the flight home was as uneventful as the flight to SLC the previous morning. Nate watched "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" four times (no exaggeration) and AJ mostly played on the IPad, and after Aunt Caitlin picked us up from the airport at about 6:00 PM, and "the longest day" was finally over.