Saturday, January 13, 2007

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Remember the movie Planes, trains, and automobiles where the guys do everything they can to get to their destination, yeah well....

Lets compare our flights shall we. First the flight from Bozeman to Seattle; We left at 8am, the temperature outside was -24, the jet way had ice on the inside of the walls, the temp inside the plane was not much better. The two flight attendants said that when they got on the plane an hour before us it was -14 in the plane. They were taking rubber gloves and filling them with hot water to create make shift hot water bottles to put in their clothing. One of the flight attendants even had one of the blankets wrapped around her like a skirt.

Second the trip from Seattle to Dallas; The airlines desk in Seattle opened at 4:30am, my flight out of Seattle was due to leave at 6:00am so we got there at 4:30am (stress here that I am NOT a morning person, just ask Rev he will gladly confirm this fact) and the line was already a mile long. We left Seattle and were suppose to go to Dallas, change planes and then head to Belize. I got to the airport in Seattle and was informed that my flight out of Dallas had already been cancelled. I was rebooked out of Dallas for the next day, Sunday. After getting through checkin and through an equally long line at security we were finally headed to our gate. We got to the gate just in time, boarding had already begun. So much for grabbing a bite to eat, tummies were just gonna have to rumble a bit. The flight attendants anounced that they had breakfast sandwiches, cookies, chips, trailmix, and M&Ms for sale. I figured we would settle for a cookie ($3.00 a piece) and then get real food when we landed. Just our luck when the flight attendant got to us, they were out of everything except trailmix and M&Ms, mmmmm breakfast of champions and still $3.00. Movie was "The Queen" which is better than no movie but I was so tired I slept. Then when it was close to time to land and we were 40minutes from Dallas we were told that the airport had been closed to flights and we were put into a holding pattern. 30 min later we were finally cleared to land. Because the flight was cancelled due to weather, there were no hotel vouchers offered and we were basically on our own along with all the other people who had their flights cancelled or missed flight connections etc.. The 16 people in our group with all of our luggage and medical supplies were left wondering what to do. We did make arrangements finally and got us into two different hotels. We are now quietly waiting for the next airplane ride. I am hoping that this one will be better than the last two. By the way it is 33degrees here in Dallas. At least it is getting warmer.

I knew this was going to be an adventure but I thought it would wait until we arrived in Belize, guess I was wrong.

1 comment:

Jane Ellen+ said...

Oh, goodness! I'm glad you found a hotel, though. That's seriously chilly weather in Dallas-- and with the humidity, feels even worse than it would here. There's something to be said for "a dry cold."