Monday, July 30, 2012 - Travel Day back to Syracuse

Got up bright and early (and having packed all our now clean clothing!), we said our good-byes and headed out to Washington, DC. No problems with traffic, dropped Hubby off at the terminal, then turned in our rental car (though it took me awhile to find the off-site parking, my GPS has been notoriously unreliable lately, ever since it downloaded an "upgrade" recently), but the shuttle got me back in plenty of time. Arrived to discover that our flight was delayed anything, first for half an hour, then for another hour, until the departure time was equal to the original arrival time. We settled down in a nice restaurant for the duration, had a quiet meal before heading to the gate at what was now supposed to be nearly 90 minutes before our flight departure time. Alas, they pulled a fast one, and swapped out planes, so now we heard our names being called over the PA system, apparently they were trying to get everyone on board this new plane ASAP. We heard the first announcement that our flight was actually BOARDING about the time we arrived at security! I managed to get through okay, but Hubby’s suitcase had a bunch of business cards that I had ordered scattered throughout his carryon, and they must have looked like little plastic bricks of C4 or something, because they insisted it all be taken out and re-scanned. I ran down to the gate (which thankfully was close by the security area rather than at the far end of the terminal, which is how it usually goes) to let them know we were on the way, then ran back to help Hubby re-pack everything. We arrived hurriedly, than ended up sitting on the shuttle bus for another half hour while other passengers got rounded up. Finally we set off to board the plane (from the tarmac, not at a gate, that’s how small the jet was) and got settled in, about 45 minutes after the original departure, but 45 minutes before the re-scheduled departure. That caused problems, though, because apparently the airport manager wouldn’t let them re-set the time yet again, even though we were ready to go. The pilot came on and made an announcement about it, and he sounded ticked because they were trying to make a turnaround that would get them back to Florida, but the delay was going to cause them to have to spend the night in DC, and if we wanted to complain we should write to Danielle the manager at our convenience!! I’ve never heard that one before! Anyway, something happened, and 15 minutes later we were off the ground winging our way back to Syracuse, arriving about an hour late, but still before it got dark, thankfully. We even had time to run by Country Max to pick up the four bags of Legends Senior Feed we had special ordered, if we had been much later they would have closed and we would have had to make yet another trip out of our way. So in the end, everything worked out, as it so often seems to do! Got back to happy dogs and happy horses and our happy, soft and comfy bed!