Andrew dropped me off at the airport rather than making me ride MARTA (like I make him do). My anxiety tends to go through the roof when I travel, so I was having a frazzled morning with lots of wonderful tummy aches (not that he was planning on putting me on MARTA, anyway).
Not having to navigate the airport with any children in tow was certainly different than...you know...dragging a number of children through the airport. On the one hand, it was lovely. I didn't have to worry about whether anyone was going to wander off or leave anything behind or pee their pants or sit down and cry and refuse to stand up and walk again or...you know...whatever.
On the other hand I had to stand in the regular, ordinary TSA line with everyone, rather than being put in the expedited line for those who need assistance, so that process took much longer (but I was all by myself so it wasn't all that bad).
My flight was delayed by about half an hour, but after all the news about cancelled flights this past week I was just glad my flight was going at all. I had never experienced Delta's system of assigning seats...when you get there...that was weird. They put up passenger's names on a screen—just the first two letters of your last name, followed by the first letter of your first name—with your assignment, but you have to read the list quickly because the screen will change and cycle through several different slides of other information before popping back up again for—in my opinion—an absurdly short amount of time.
My seat was 39F (the window seat in the very back of the plane) and I was in zone 8 (the very last zone to be seated) and ended up very near the end of the line because I was helping another girl figure out what seat she was supposed to be in (because the app on her phone hadn't updated to tell her which seat to be in, as mine luckily had since I didn't figure out the seat assignment chart until later).
So I was practically the last person on the plane and had to walk down the whole aisle trying not to crash into anybody and then seats D and E had to get out of their seats to let me sit down and...
You know when everyone disembarks and they just do it basically row by row, waiting for the people in front of them to go first (which in my case meant waiting until everyone else in the plane had gotten off)? That makes so much sense and is 100% how the plane should be loaded as well.
I mean, they talk big about how we can expedite the boarding process by paying attention to our boarding zones and checking larger carry-ons (which, of course, I had to do because there was no room in the bins by the time they got down to me, which was fine)...but I honestly think that aside from a few exceptions (families with young children, the elderly, those with disabilities who need more time to get settled), we should fill the plane from the back to the front.
Instead we allow active military to board first (strange perk, I think, as much as I appreciate our servicemen), and I think you can pay for priority boarding (which, money talks, I get that, but why worry about when you get to board the plane as long as you're at the gate—I actually like boarding the plane later rather than earlier because it means less time sitting in cramped conditions...unless, of course, I'm the very last one on the plane having to walk past literally everybody).
Anyway, I'm sure there's a reason they board the plane like they do (I'm 95% sure the reason is "money" but, I mean, at least that's a reason) and, like I said, we all got on the plane (except those few waiting for standby) so it doesn't really matter in the end. I just think boarding in order would make more sense sometimes.
*****
The flight was incredibly turbulent. So turbulent that they delayed the drink service until very near the end of the flight. So we were in turbulence for hours. Just shaking, shaking, shaking the whole flight. And bouncing up and down in our seats.
It was not a pleasant flight.
But I did get to read quite a lot of my book (when we weren't bouncing around so much).
*****
My sister Kelli is working at a shuttle company right now. She drives tour busses around as well as running shuttles to the airport. She just happened to be doing her last airport drop-off around the time my flight came in, so she got permission to just wait for me and pick me up. While she waited she was helping other shuttle-users find their correct shuttle and load their luggage and things, so she wasn't just standing around.
When I arrived I hopped in her shuttle with her and we zipped off to her work to return the shuttle. And then we drove around to run a few wedding errands. And then we picked up some burgers and headed to the vacation rental Kelli had booked for her daughter Amy.
I was so impressed with Amy! She only recently got her license (in the last couple of years) and now here she was, driving from Alberta down to Utah by herself with her two little boys in tow! I would never!
Amy had a hard day, having locked herself out of her vehicle in the morning (she'd spent the night at a hotel, halfway through the drive), and then having had to pull over multiple times to deal with carsick kids. She was quite frazzled, but I was like, "Here! Let me snap a selfie so I can show everyone that we both made it to Utah!" and I took this picture where I look like...a maniac...and she somehow looks glamorous.
Not sure that's fair, but it is what it is.
We all arrived at the vacation rental within seconds of each other—Kelli and I from the airport, Amy from Calgary, and Kevin (one of my sister's lifelong friends) from Vancouver. No one even had time to get out of our vehicle before the other had arrived, so it was honestly quite impeccable timing!
Here are the boys enjoying their grilled cheese sandwiches (everyone else had burgers):
The rental is pretty cool—they have a climbing wall and twirly slide and little hidey-holes and an entire crawlspace-turned-kid-hangout with miniature couches and a play kitchen and dollhouse and all sorts of things. The boys thought it was pretty cool that they could reach up and touch the ceiling. Amy thought it was less cool that she'd have to crawl around under there to pick up everything the boys got out and didn't put away properly.
The slide was fun (I can confirm because I also went down it):
After we'd finished visiting with Amy (and waiting for rush hour traffic to dissipate), Kelli drove me down to our parents' house in Provo.
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