I am looking at you, Northwest.
The plan for getting there was to fly into Boston, then drive up to Maine with my parents. This went pretty well, actually.
The plan for getting home was the same in reverse: drive down to Boston with my parents and fly back home. We set off at 9:00 to ensure we got to the airport with enough time to check in, get through security, etc. Didn't want anything to go wrong, you know?
But as soon as we got there and got in line to check in, we found out the flight was delayed 1:15. Maintenance issues. We get down to the gate (after driving the strollers down a flight of stairs because we could find no elevator to the lower level of gates) and set the children free - free-range children. Wear them out before the flight. Get them some food, milk, etc. We wait out the delay and board the flight.
We wait aboard the plane and try to keep the children occupied until we begin to taxi. We start moving, and miraculously, the children both doze off. We taxi, and taxi, and keep going, making at least two rounds of the runways in Boston. At one point, I ask Pants if they are driving us home. And then we pull back up to the gate. The children are still asleep and we don't know what's going on yet. We wait, the kids wake up, and we wait some more. At least 45 minutes.
The pilot comes on and says there is a maintenance issue with the landing gear that is more complicated than they thought. They are going to have to replace a tire and a rotor and it will take around an hour, give or take. If we get off, we should bring our boarding passes.
We get off and head straight to the bar. We get some milk for the kids and Jack and Cokes for ourselves, and we take the kids back to the gate and let them loose. After about another hour, I get in line to find out what's going on. While in line, I start hearing that the flight is canceled until the morning. Someone in line says their mother just called and sees this flight online as taking off tomorrow. And the gate attendants, talking to each other like we either aren't there or are all deaf and blind, are saying there are only enough seats on the next flight for half the passengers on this one. I get booked on the 6:00 p.m. flight because I am already in line. The original flight was supposed to have left at 1:15. We have been at the airport since 11:30.
We go upstairs, sans strollers because they are on the plane that is not taking off (gate-checked), and the upstairs is not nearly as nice, new, clean, or carpeted. So Pants holds Meimei and walks in circles while I take Kitten for a walk. We find a McDonald's and get some food and go back. We all sit down and have some dinner, as it is now 5:30-ish. My phone is dead, so we find a plug-in to set next to on the floor while I charge it. During our little meal, the airport announces that the jetway is inoperable for our new flight, so there has been a gate change. Back to where we were. So we finish our meal, gather up our bags and our munchkins, and head back downstairs. The flight leaves late and we are all completely done by the time it takes off.
Everything goes downhill from there. The kids try to keep it together, but the last half hour of the flight is a complete melt-down. Kitten just starts crying uncontrollably during landing that Pants justs unbuckles her and holds her. It doesn't stop, but we feel better. It takes about 3 years to put the plane on the ground and I have these irrational thoughts of standing up and yelling at the pilot to just land on the freeway, for crying out loud.
We finally get down and we have to wait to taxi into the gate, and we're way in the back, so we have to wait forever to get off. And apparently they have driven us home, but we have to walk all the way back through the airport to get our luggage. This must have been why it took so long to taxi. And we wait for our baggage, but the baggage coming out isn't even for our flight - right carousel, but apparently they can't use any of the other 7 open carousels for our flight, they have to wait for this one to be done. So we decide to take the kids to the car, and we know we are in the green ramp, but there is a green ramp for short term and a green ramp for general parking, which is about the dumbest thing I ever heard. So we end up in the wrong green ramp and we just turn on each other.
Now, it takes a lot for the two of us to really go at each other, but we hit the end and went for each other's throats. It only lasts about two sentences and we just stop speaking after that. We both know it's all the tension, that neither of us meant any of it, so we try to pick up and go on, stop the madness and try to be nice to each other. We apologize later.
We find the car eventually, Pants takes off to get the luggage, I get the kids and carry-ons into the car, pick up Pants, and we finally get home. Kids go into bed as is, Meimei gets a bottle, and we sit down and have a beer.
This isn't even all of it. I skipped some of the other insults, like one of the beers on the plane getting kicked off the seat-back tray and falling into Pants's lap, and the same partial beer getting somehow kicked out of the seat pocket and dousing several toys. When I went back onto our old flight to get our carryons, after we got booked onto the new flight, there were several people waiting to get off that weren't being allowed off by the flight crew, who apparently had gotten a different story than the gate crew.
And the reason the flight got canceled completely? Not because they couldn't fix it. The pilots were at the end of their "flight day", meaning they had started too early to complete the late flight, according to federal regulations. Which is all fine and everything, you don't want a pilot falling asleep on you, but didn't they know that an hour before? When they announced it was going to take an hour to fix the plane?
This morning we had some time, and since we were staying 6 blocks from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, I requested that we go see the Temple. What else do you do in SLC on Sunday morning? Aside from being accosted by several Stepford Mormon Sisters who clearly wanted to discuss their close personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the square was really beautiful and quiet in the snow. Some of the architecture was quite pretty.
