The airport debacle

Since I started my career in retail, I haven't been able to visit home often. Every year, I've made it a point to make it back to New Mexico for my first vacation on the year. It always falls during mine and my mom's birthdays. 


Last Saturday was my first day of my vacation. It was the longest and by far the worst experience I've had with flying--keep in mind that I've been flying since I was months old. I made the mistake of flying with a buddy pass during spring break/mardi gras week. In my mind, I was saving money by using the pass and I'd be able to share the price of my sister's ticket to help her out. 


I made my first flight, but my connecting flight was over booked and had 13 other people flying standby ahead of my name. That was the last Southwest flight of the day. I was stuck at the Love airport in Dallas! My sister was flying out of DFW though. She and her mr picked me up and booked it to the other airport. She ended up missing her check in time and had to pay extra to get on the next flight. In the midst of that, I realized I left my id in her mr's car and couldn't get a ticket. Finally got it back and ended up having to purchase a $280 ticket from a lady named Mrs. Chinchilla. We got to the gate and had three hours to kill. I bought a can of almonds and cut my finger on the lid. It took forever for it to stop bleeding. 



I truly thought the day couldn't get any worse. I spoke to soon. Once on the plane, I ended up sitting in front of two very loud, very annoying teenagers. To make matters worse, my seat was in the exit row and was asked four times whether I was "able and will" to perform the duties of sitting there. This only freaked me out more when as the plane was pulling out of the gate all power was lost suddenly. The captain came on over the speaker and announced that the belt that started the engine came loose and needed to be pulled back to the gate. I started to wonder whether I really was able and willing. Fortunately, 15 minutes later we were able to proceed to the runway, by that point I wasn't sure if I wanted to be on that plane anymore. 


We made it home safely though. My mom, stepdad and older brother picked us up at the airport. We went straight from their to Cappeto's, a cute little italian food restaurant in El Paso. It was around 10:30pm when we got there and we were all so very hungry. 


I felt bad for all the chaos that took place. Saturday was my mom's and stepdad's 12 year anniversary, and they had to postpone the celebration dinner because of the flight fiasco. But we enjoyed dinner, shared some great conversations and most importantly, got to spend the evening together.