We received phone calls and text messages all day about how bad the weather was going to be on the east coast. Everything was fine when we arrived at the airport, but at about 7:00 p.m. all hell broke loose. Leah's flight was delayed to Atlanta, my flight to Philadelphia was cancelled, and people were starting to lose it. I had to wait in the United Airlines customer service line for quite some time and there was a woman behind me who kept asserting how important she was because she had a "class to teach at a major university on Monday morning." Yeah, good for you. The rest of us are unimportant losers who don't mind living at LAX for several days. They tried to put me on some flight to Chicago where I could connect to Syracuse, but that didn't work out the two times they put me on standby, so I finally asked if they could confirm me on a flight the next day. They were able to get me an actual seat on a flight to Denver and then fly me from Denver to LaGuardia, and from LaGuardia to Ithaca, so I jumped at the offer.
Leah left at about 1:00 in the morning and I spent the rest of the night sitting around LAX making sure that my flight hadn't been cancelled again. Leah made it to Atlanta before I even left L.A., but I did get to Denver around noon and slept for most of the flight. The problem was that everything was so backed up from the disastrous night before that my flight to LaGuardia kept getting delayed. We finally left Denver about three and a half hours late, which meant that I didn't land in NYC until about 9:30 at night. By the time I took the bus to the US Airways terminal, I had missed my flight to Ithaca by five minutes. Thankfully, I saw that coming, so I had the nice customer service man in Denver confirm me on the first flight from LaGuardia to Ithaca on Tuesday morning. So, I called a hotel near the airport and was able to get a room where I could take a shower and get a little sleep.
Since I was supposed to teach a class at 10:10 on Tuesday morning, I knew that I would be cutting it close, so I told my students that we would start class at 10:45 instead and prayed that my flight would be on time. Thankfully, even though we were a little late leaving, we arrived just before 10:00. My luggage was waiting for me at the airport since my flights had been so screwed up, and I grabbed it, ran to the car, and drove to campus. I made it to my office at about 10:30, exhausted, but on time to teach at least most of my class. I still haven't quite recovered from the loss of sleep and the beginning of daylight savings time hasn't helped with that, but I was definitely glad to get home.
McKenna got to stay an extra day at the spa, and apparently the morning spa person loved her so much that she was thrilled when I called to extend her stay. She was definitely glad to see me when I arrived on Tuesday afternoon to pick her up, though, and she has been very supportive of my need to sleep a lot in the past week.
Despite the two day trip home, the trip was a much needed break for me in warmer weather. Leah and I had a lot of fun playing tourist, so the trip was totally worthwhile.
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