Saturday, December 23, 2006

Holiday travel! Joy! Joy! Joy! NOT!

Early Thursday morning, Alex left Calgary. More than 36 hours later, he arrived at our house.

His trouble started when he arrived in Chicago and the spillover Denver mess had affected flights in Chicago, plus Chicago had rain and fog. His flight was delayed, delayed, then he was bumped so he had to spend the night sleeping in a chair in the Chicago airport.

Meanwhile, Rene was waiting at the Columbia, SC airport for about 6 hours. Alex had forgotten to bring our phone number. He finally got a hold of his neighbor who looked up our phone number (thank you internet!). So Rene returned home, after spending about 8 hours waiting at the Columbia airport (an hour away).

The next morning, Friday, Alex called that he would be flying to Washington D.C. and then to Greenboro, NC, which is over 4 hours away. So Alex, flew, got in an hour later than we expected. Of course Alex's suitcase was not in Greensboro. Luckily, I called the Columbia, SC airport baggage claim and it took them two minutes to find it. Rene and Alex stopped along the way to get the suitcase. Rene left at 8 am to pick up Alex and they returned 8 pm.

But Alex was not alone in his travel woes! Just after I had located the suitcase, Richard (Rene's oldest son) called to say that he and Liam (Rene's youngest son), had an adventure. They were supposed to fly direct from Calgary to London. For some strange reason someone at the airport told them they'd need to fly to Vancouver (uh, hello, wrong direction!) So they flew to Vancouver. You guessed it, when they got to Vancouver they had to fly back to Calgary to get to London! Doh! They arrived in London earlier today.

I was happy not to have to drive, fly and just be command central at home. The girls and I picked up my parents on Wednesday. Luckily they were only 20 minutes late. Dietrich, Leticia and Andrew are due in a few hours. Cross your fingers they arrive on time!

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