March 5 - bumpy journey home

Oooohhh... the journey home.

I began my day around 4:30 a.m. east coast time, when I woke suddenly and was entirely unable to get back to sleep. I tried, but gave up around 5:30 and decided to get moving on the packing. The night before I had gathered items into categories thusly:

Pile A) MUST go in checked luggage
Pile B) MUST go in carry-on
Pile C) Fill in the gaps

This method seemed to work pretty well. After a couple hours of careful consideration, we managed to arrange everything to fit reasonably within all our bags - using our spare shoulder bags as new carry-ons, and having to check a couple of our rolling suitcases.

Having our bags lined up and ready to roll, we headed down to Chill Awhile for a last breakfast. I had a quick bowl of porridge, D ordered ackee and bacon (which he shared with me) and probably two pots of coffee between the two of us. After breakfast, our friends walked us up to the front of the hotel, where Tyrone was loading our bags into the van. I checked us into our flight on the hotel's computer, and we gave hugs to the staff at Idle Awhile and our friends, and piled into the van.

The drive to the airport took roughly an hour and a half. G and I watched the countryside whiz by while D talked to Tyrone about foods, cooking, other places on the island to visit. Ty invited us to come to his house the next time we visit, we'll have a day where we hang out and cook good food and just chill.

Just after we had hit the road in Negril, D started getting calls on his cell phone. He didn't check the voice mail until we were within reliable cell coverage, about 5 minutes outside of the airport. It turns out the calls were all from the airline. Shortly after I had checked us in, and verified our flight information was up to speed, our flight had been canceled.... and we were now scheduled for a flight 4 hours later. This would put us into Charlotte sometime around 10 p.m., possibly staying overnight before flying on home.

Though I've never actually had a flight completely canceled like that on me, this is one of the reasons I was glad we were coming home on a Friday. Even if we were delayed overnight, we'd still have the weekend to recover before jumping back into routine. It's not like we weren't going to make it home... it was just going to be delayed and reworked.

As we approached the line for the ticket counter, the airport guy unloaded our bags for us up next to the front, where I stood to wait while D went to the back of the long line. Many people in line were looking tense - we had all been scheduled on that flight, and the employees were scrambling to get us all home in some other manner. D wasn't in line for more than two minutes before he was approached.

"You are flying to Seattle? Come with me, we need you at the front of the line to get you on a flight right away."

Wha?!?

Most of the American's we've encountered in Jamaica came from the east coast. Jamaica is a quick jump for them - a hop down the coastline to paradise - so it is a popular vacation destination. We have yet to meet anyone from anywhere further west than Chicago on that island. As such... the long line of people in front of us were all waiting to be booked on later flights, running up along the east coast in various combinations of connections through east coast ports. We, on the other hand, were the only people from the flight trying to eventually get out west, so they had a different option. Rather than wait 4 hours to get a flight to Charlotte and stay overnight, we can put you on a flight running through Phoenix that leaves in 30 minutes.

All in all, it would put us in Seattle about 2 hours ahead of our original schedule, which was fantastic... but it meant a mad dash through security, down the hall, and directly on to the plane. No time for planned lunch or last minute shopping. No time for a bathroom break. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Luckily, security had light traffic, and we got through and were waved past the secondary "paw through your bags" search, and onto the plane.. where we discovered there were only 38 passengers total.

So we were now getting home 2 hours early, with the longest leg of the flight on a plane that was so empty we had the option of each having our own row to stretch out and sleep in. On the surface it sounded ideal... but I've seen too many disaster movies... Our flight was being switched at the last minute - not even enough time to alert family and friends to the change of plans, one of the flight attendants had never been on that route before... and the headline began to flash in my mind:

"We didn't know they were in the crash until days later... they weren't even supposed to be on that plane"

I didn't want to alarm D or G with my paranoid thought tangent, but I did quietly insist that he PLEASE text someone in his family about the flight change, so that someone would know. Somehow that made it much better for me.

The flight itself was turbulent at times, but in general was quiet and laid back. The plane was so empty that snacks were served immediately, and we were given full cans of drinks at a time. G and I played games, curled up and napped, worked on her homework... and once we were over land I spent a good amount of time watching the landscape change out the window.

We touched down in Phoenix at gate B25. Our connecting flight was at gate B27. We were ushered through the doors, down a ramp, to an underground area of the airport to go through customs and immigration.

This airport was laid out differently than Charlotte. Though the process is the same: Immigration for passport stamping... pick up checked luggage... customs for passport check and questions answering... recheck luggage... security... gate: the stretches of walking in between processes were vastly different. In Charlotte everything is located in one narrow area - once you get through immigration and customs, you are brought through a tiny security area just for incoming international flights, and back into the airport. In Phoenix, we wound our way through underground tunnels, hitting every stop along the way, and once we had rechecked our luggage we followed the hallway where we were led OUT of the airport - to the parking garage - and had to come back in through the main security area. The lines for security were extremely long, and once we made it through that we hoofed it all the way back through the airport to the gate for our next flight... D stopping for airport pizza on the way, because it was the only thing we had time for as a dinner.

The funny thing was, we sat to eat our pizza not more than 5 feet from the doors we walked in through... and it took us nearly 2 hours to get to that door.

The hop from Phoenix to Seattle was relatively short, and we landed home at last... a couple hours ahead of schedule, luggage all accounted for. We had arranged for a shared van shuttle to take us home, which we piled into and G fell asleep on my shoulder almost immediately.

Once home, we stepped into the freezing cold night... greeted by the bright lights of the house, the smell of pine trees in the air. G went right upstairs to bed while D and I lined up our bags and checked things over, pull out the items that might need to go in the fridge, and hit the hay ourselves.

It was a long day of travel - but we made it home safe and sound.