Getting Out
We're going back in time to December 28, the day I flew out of Boston with the kids to visit my mom in DC. I'm going to skip over the movers coming, because that involved three out of four of us getting the stomach flu (I was the lucky one who evaded it). Becca was better by the time the movers came, but Eric was moaning in the back room and Justin was moaning on the couch. Needless to say, I'd rather not remember the details.
Unfortunately, things didn't improve on the 28th when we were scheduled to leave. The cab came as scheduled, and I grabbed our nine bags and two kids and two bags of trash plus one giant plastic bin of trash to throw out before we left. As you can imagine, I don't have fourteen hands, so I took several loads back and forth to the elevator. That went okay until one of the bags of trash split open all over the elevator. At 4 am. And we had a plane to catch. And no extra trash bags, because, you know, we were moving across the Atlantic.
When the trash spilled out of the elevator into the lobby when the door opened, I almost gave up right then. I really thought we might not make it. Usually I am a fairly resourceful person who can solve problems in a pinch, but I didn't see how I was going to get all our suitcases into the taxi, pick up the trash (with what?) throw it away in the dumpster, deal with the kids (one of whom was still sick) and get to the airport on time for our 6 am flight.
I managed to do it somehow (should have taken a picture of the trash in the lobby). It involved a very nice cab driver loading trash into his cab to take around the corner to the dumpster. I gave him a big tip.
In the end, it didn't matter whether we were late or not because once we boarded the plane, we were grounded for THREE hours.
This is what it looked like out our window after about an hour. Still dark. One of the plane lights was broken and we couldn't take off until sunrise. That was only the first problem. After sunrise another mechanical difficulty meant we waited for another two hours. The kids were complete troopers. Justin still felt sick but they both handled it like pros. We did get a little slap happy, so here's a picture that Justin took in the plane, at about hour 2.5, just for the sake of something to do. It's a view we became very familiar with..
Anyway, that plane never took off. We got back off, waited, and then were directed to a new plane that had mechanical problems. Fortunately, those got resolved quickly and we finally took off 3.5 hours late. We were all SO happy to get to my mom's in DC!
It turns out the planes were having so many problems because of the extreme weather in Boston. The morning we left the temperature dipped to -20 with the wind chill...
Unfortunately, things didn't improve on the 28th when we were scheduled to leave. The cab came as scheduled, and I grabbed our nine bags and two kids and two bags of trash plus one giant plastic bin of trash to throw out before we left. As you can imagine, I don't have fourteen hands, so I took several loads back and forth to the elevator. That went okay until one of the bags of trash split open all over the elevator. At 4 am. And we had a plane to catch. And no extra trash bags, because, you know, we were moving across the Atlantic.
When the trash spilled out of the elevator into the lobby when the door opened, I almost gave up right then. I really thought we might not make it. Usually I am a fairly resourceful person who can solve problems in a pinch, but I didn't see how I was going to get all our suitcases into the taxi, pick up the trash (with what?) throw it away in the dumpster, deal with the kids (one of whom was still sick) and get to the airport on time for our 6 am flight.
I managed to do it somehow (should have taken a picture of the trash in the lobby). It involved a very nice cab driver loading trash into his cab to take around the corner to the dumpster. I gave him a big tip.
In the end, it didn't matter whether we were late or not because once we boarded the plane, we were grounded for THREE hours.
This is what it looked like out our window after about an hour. Still dark. One of the plane lights was broken and we couldn't take off until sunrise. That was only the first problem. After sunrise another mechanical difficulty meant we waited for another two hours. The kids were complete troopers. Justin still felt sick but they both handled it like pros. We did get a little slap happy, so here's a picture that Justin took in the plane, at about hour 2.5, just for the sake of something to do. It's a view we became very familiar with..
Anyway, that plane never took off. We got back off, waited, and then were directed to a new plane that had mechanical problems. Fortunately, those got resolved quickly and we finally took off 3.5 hours late. We were all SO happy to get to my mom's in DC!
It turns out the planes were having so many problems because of the extreme weather in Boston. The morning we left the temperature dipped to -20 with the wind chill...
Comments
Post a Comment