what a trip...literaly and figuratively

BUT we are here in Seattle. and it is wonderful.
it had been a loooooong week to begin with and the end of it was totally in keeping with the rest of the week.

We started the day at 5am. Now thats not an unusually early time for me to be up, but the computer was already packed to travel and I was acutally moving, doing at 5a instead of the usual reading and waking up kinds of things I am about at 0'dark thirty in the morning. But off we were, in the light rain...appropriate to begin a trip to the grey PNW.

Got moving and hit our stride. Opted not to hit fast food land for a breakfast treat (we had already had a peanut butter english muffin half, and at the wee hours the body can only tolerate so much food). Stopped somewhere just inside the Wisconsin border to get refills on the caffiene, empty the previous caffiene, and motored on.

We left so early with the express desire to avoid any rush hour traffic either in Milwaukee or Chicago areas. I have to say, we did pretty well at that. There was only one stretch of about 10 miles well north of Chicago where we slowed down to 10 mph for a while. Then we got off the tollway and made our way to the suburban home of SIL, who would drive us into the big airport, saving us the horrendous parking costs. From there we were....on....our....way. or so we thought.

It has been ages since we have traveled by plane. I think the NZ trip 3.5 years ago was the last time. In the interim, Air travel has changed just a bit. We printed our own tickets, checked ourselves in (with the help of a sweet, elderly man who also got our bag checked in) and went off to homeland security.....to take off our shoes and have our belongings scanned. Even having read all the rules, the fear that there will be something considered contraband, or that my shoes will mysteriously have something bizzare in them makes it a little bit harried. Of course the young dyke at the other end of the scanner made it a bit easier by saying something about the fact that we didn't quite look the type to cause problems. My question is why do they not have banks of chairs or at least some benches for us to sit and put shoes back on?

Anyway....we get to the gate, find a bathroom and begin the wait. Another bonus of Homeland Security is that you have to arrive hours before your flight, just in case there is an issue with the security process. Airlines will not wait. I learned yesterday that airlines will not do much anymore. When we got to the gate, there was a line at the check-in counter. Angry people were dealing with a "situation".

Our first leg was to get us to Atlanta....and it seemed that the weather in that major Delta hub was horrendous. Flights had been cancelled and delayed and it was causing a major kerfluffle here at good old gate L5. Computers had deleted people and changed their itineraries without request or warning. People were testy and frustrated. Security almost had to be called because one gentleman became quite rude and demanded attention immediately. The computerized voice kept telling us that even if we had a confirmed seat, things had to be confirmed again. We were told our seats were safe.

Then the delays began. In the meantime, the friend who arranged this all found an alternate path for us to try. After I stood in line for another hour, offered up our seats on the Atlanta flight if they wanted to switch us to the Salt Lake City flight, he said he couldn't do anything about it and soon after, left. This was a good thing because his customer assistance skills were nonexistent by that time. But do you know that when they cancel your flight due to weather, they do not offer to pay for your hotel anymore.

Well we got a bit edgy when the delays were setting us up to miss our connecting flight.and by this time its well past 1pm.
Again I went to the counter, offered them the option of switching our flight to something we could actually get to Seattle on, and they suggested we head to the other gate and have them take care of it there. Lickety split we were transfered to another flight that would take us to Salt Lake City airport and then on to Seattle from there. and only an hour later than our original arrival time.

The flight to SLC was almost anti-climactic. The view out the window at the airport was nothing less than phenomenal (i love mountains). I had a major panic attack when I tried to boot up the computer to kill some time. Couldnt boot up because the password used both sides of the keyboard, and half the keyboard was not working :(.....kind of put a damper on my mood. But a quickie chinese dinner later we were on the plane for the Pacific Northwest.

When we finally got to Seattle, the next question was our luggage...we only checked one piece, and of course because we changed flights, it was destined not to arrive when we did....BUT as we waited to be sure that the suitcase really was not there, another flight was unloading baggage. Our original flight. And yes, there was our case....it made it too.

A phone call later we were climbing into a private shuttle, greeting old friends and speeding our way to Redmond.