2/14: Snowed In. Try Paradise Again Tomorrow.

It's probably too small to see (so you'll have to click on it to get a better view), but when we arrived at the airport on the early morn of Valentines Day, we thought we were happy to see that our flight was "only" delayed, not cancelled like 95% of all the flights at the time.

Let me first tell you about how we GOT to the airport. It had been sleeting/freezing raining/snowing the night before, but because there were cars still driving on the road, the paths were pretty clear. It wasn't until when we were getting ready to leave at 4am (our flight was at 6am) when we found out our car was covered in about 3 inches of snow pack and 1 inch of ice. The drive there was a little frightening as well. There was a good 6 inches of "slush puppie", snow cone-type ice/snow on the ground, with freezing rain still falling, and our wipers were not working too well. There was about two inches on the bottom of the windshield that was clear (thanks to the heater) so I could look through. I used that window to follow the snow plow truck that was speeding away, but that was the only way I could follow his tracks and not fly off into a 360 degree turn. Good thing there were only a few cars on the road! Eventually, we got to the parking lot, got everything out of the car and realized that strollers and suitcases with wheels do not work too well under 6 inches of slush puppie.

We had been tracking the flight since yesterday afternoon. We were originally going to fly out of Baltimore, making the car trip even more impossible (75 miles vs 15), but that flight was cancelled so I fanagled my way into flying out and back in from Dulles (we chose BWI at first because our flight to Honolulu out of there was 240 per person total!). So after we made that change we probably hit refresh on the computer every 10 minutes to check the flight status until we left the next morning. Didn't find out they were delayed until we got to the ticket counter. The lady there said "yeah, flights are delayed until 8am". So with the new free time we had, I went back out to the car to pick up my phone that had fallen into the inner depths of the car while we were getting ready to catch the shuttle.

Well, 8am rolls around, the people at the counter say 9am. That was still okay because we still would have about an hour layover in Houston. But then the guy said 10am, and we were in trouble. The delay wasn't because of the airlines, per se, but because the airport couldn't de-ice the runways and planes fast enough . Note that it was still freezing raining/sleeting. Anyway, 10am wasn't going to work, so after fanangling with the counter-lady (who was Lao, by the way; I was hoping the social engineering thing would work...it eventually did, but it took a while) and the airline company over the phone a few times, we were able to get a flight for Thursday (the next day) at a little later time (so we don't have to get there at 4am or whatever), and instead of going home on the next Tuesday (which would have given us a little less than 5 days of sun), I pushed the return date to Saturday night, giving us 4 more days! The whole idea behind leaving on V-day was to spend time with family, since David and Alexis and Rose were all in Hawaii, with D+A leaving on the evening of the 15th for Amsterdam and Rose on the same night back to Seattle. But with the schedule change, we only saw them for four hours! But now that we're extending, we can see D+A when they get back and hang out for a couple more days!

So I went into work for a little bit (really, just a little bit, since shortly after I got there, senior management sent everyone home!) and got home, and found someone to take us to a hotel I booked so the shuttle can take us to the airport (I thought the hotel would have free parking but it didn't--oh well). The hotel was nice despite giving us a smoking room. Came out with black lung, but the next day we were able to get on the plane with no problems at all!

By the way, the flight that had been delayed until 10am on V-day eventually pushed out at 12:30pm...just to return back to the gate at 1:15pm, and finally left at 2:30pm, arriving in Houston around 5pm! Good thing we didn't wait. We were at the airport that morning for about 5 hours!

But we're here now, out of the snow, in the sun. More to come.