Ah hell, our vacation is over. Bags packed… sad faces… we said goodbye to our room and made our way for the exits. Before leaving we put one more postcard in the mail, bought some rum cakes, said goodbye to all the “starfishes,” and checked out at the front desk. We hopped in a mini-van and went to the airport.
I fully expected the airport to be a total PITA, but I had no idea what was in store for us. Getting our tickets was the easiest thing all day, and even that took like 15 minutes in line. Once we had tickets in hand, we had to walk through a line where we had to check in our bags and go through the metal detectors. Once through, we had to walk to the customs desk… yes, the US customs agents are actually in the Bahamas. We got through customs and had to walk up a flight of stairs, where we then had to go through more metal detectors. Finally we made it to the gate.
Food was high on our priority list, but this place didn’t offer much in the way of veggies. I ended up with a croissant, Lane ate a muffin and we all split what I though to be some Bahamian candy, but turned out to be Swedish.
Our flight to Miami only took a tad over an hour, and was fairly painless. It was now 12:15 PM, and we were supposed to have a 1 hour and ten minute layover…
When we trekked across two terminals to our gate and found nothing but seats filled with water from leaky roofs, we should have realized these were signs. Heavy rains, lighting and thunder rolled in, and visibility out the windows quickly dropped to something like 20-25 yards. This was some crazy, jungle like rainfall happening. And the thunder and lighting was pretty incredible too, I mean, it was at the airport. It wasn’t 10 miles away, it was there. I don’t recall a time where I saw the lighting and head the thunder at the exact same time before. As I walked across a ramp connecting two terminals to get coffee for Shelly and I, a huge flash and noise actually made me jump…
I returned with coffee and fruit, and saw that our flight was now delayed an hour. Another hour in this hellish airport, and no real food for us to eat. We were really famished, and the only non-meat filled items were candy, snack foods, unripe fruit and butter croissants. Shelly and Lane ended up finding a booth with some cereal boxes, and so they ate that while I busily called American Airlines trying to get some form of an update.
An hour turned to two, then three, then four. Lane napped on Shelly’s chest, while I paced, called AA, etc. The airport was closed for more than two hours because of the storm, and there was nothing that anyone could do, we were just stuck. Everyone was pissed and miserable. Even just walking around this damn airport was difficult because there were trash cans everywhere to catch all the water leaking through the ceiling.
6:50 PM we got on an airplane and started home, but first we had to stop in St. Louis. As we flew over Missouri, I did get to see some of the damage that the floods caused, it was pretty awesome stuff. For a few minutes, it made my difficult day of travel seem somewhat insignificant… but that only lasted so long because we were all starving!
We land in STL at 8:00 PM local time. They ask that we stay on the plane because we would only be here long enough to get the folks here on the plane. I said screw it, and ran off the plane to find food. It was 8:02 PM now, and the gate agent told me I had 10 minutes before boarding. The airport map at the gate told me that there was a pretzel shop, a Starbucks and a yogurt shop right near me. I looked around, and found everything had closed about 2 minutes earlier. I’m fuming mad. When I ask to get back on the plane, the gate agent tells me that I will “kindly need to wait for my boarding group number to be called.” I’m group 5… I just can’t win today.
Some lady waiting to board the plane then asks me about the weather in Miami, and whether or not it was really “that bad.” I confirmed things for her, and then vented about my family’s hunger pains. “Well, there’s a Chili’s right down there…” she says, and that’s when I started running. It was three or four gates away, and they were still open. They had a menu to order from, not just pre-made meat-filled crap, and it had Black Bean burgers on it! Hot damn. Only problem was the four people in line, who all looked irritated as if they had been there for an hour. Ah, hell.
I run back to the gate since I only had 10 minutes, and 5 had passed, but nothing has changed. After a few minutes of waiting, they make an announcement about waiting for a substitute crew member to arrive… I run back to Chili’s with drool on my lips. As I get close, I see that the line has grown… dramatically. 10-12 people were now waiting, with the same person at the front of the line. I decided to just go back to the gate without food, embracing what had become a pattern of bad luck that was lasting the whole day.
On the flight to SFO, we paid $4 for a “cheese tray,” that had a single slice of Cheddar, some crackers, raisins and a package of mixed nuts. A mixture of sleeping and thinking of food made the four hour flight seem to last eight. We arrived at the airport baggage claim, and found our ride home (Grandma Linda) waiting for us. Turns out that she had her own bad luck that day…
I had called her a few times from Miami letting her know about the delays, and telling her how to check on our status online or over the phone. Well, the online let her down. A few hours after we talked on the phone, she looked at our flight status online, and it appeared as if we were only going to be slightly late – not the 4+ hours that we actually were. After she circled a few times making her van overheat, she parked and then learned how late we were going to be. Rather than go home, she just waited. She was just as happy to see us, as we were to see her.
We got home shortly after 1 AM, and all of us ate Morningstar sausage sandwiches as we battled to stay awake. It was the best food we had tasted in quite some time!
