Flying, continued

 I suppose I'd better finish my tale!

We made it to the hotel with all our baggage and family members, and tucked in for the night. I set my alarm for breakfast ahead of the 11 am checkout.

The kids slept in fairly late and we let them since there wouldn't be anywhere to put Sophia down for a nap preceding our 7 pm flight. I waited and waited and finally just went down to the lobby to get breakfast since we clearly weren't going to all be ready.

On the way up with the breakfast, I asked the concierge about the airport shuttle as far as the 11 am checkout. Well, the "last" shuttle was at 10 am. Until 4 pm. Huh. I couldn't quite wrap my head around that one...11 am checkout...shuttle until 10 am. It was too late for the shuttle, anyway. I headed back upstairs to finish packing.

We were downstairs and checking out by 11, and the hotel mistakenly put the charge on my debit card. Nope, DELTA will be covering that one! Luckily I caught it and got them to fix it. Meanwhile, they ordered a taxi for us.

From bits of conversation that I'd overhead, this hotel was a relatively new branch and they were still ironing out the kinks. We were certainly glad for accommodations.

We headed to the airport first (the cab driver was great) since we wouldn't be able to get far with all our suitcases. The terminal was a totally different scene this time. I first went and inquired about checking our luggage. There was no room where we could store them temporarily, but they could be dropped off up to 6 hours ahead of our flight.

Next I went to the machines and started checking in. I hadn't had a chance to try it at the hotel. As usual, I went through the whole procedure and got an error message. But in this case there was an actual agent standing there ready to help people who had questions. She took our passports and visas and checked them all and got us boarding passes. If there had been such an agent the day before, we could possibly have made our flight. Of course, it still took time and would have been more difficult at a busier time of day, but we were able to obtain information and results more easily.

We hung around until we could check our bags, and then we were free for a few hours. I had just connected with my second cousin, exactly my age, who lives in the area. She was still on summer break from teaching elementary school and cleared her schedule to hang out with us! After a little investigating, we found the public transportation pleasantly easy to use, and were meeting up with her at the aquarium in no time.

Flying by the seat of my pants

Have you ever missed a flight? Now I know what that feels like. Read on...

After spending a few weeks with my parents in the U.S, it was time to fly back to Russia. We had arranged with a transport company to be picked up 5 hours before our flight, leaving 3 hours for the 2 hour drive, arriving at least 2 hours before our flight.

It was our standard time to leave, but none of us checked the road conditions or had any idea that a MASSIVE construction project had been underway for the past few weeks. We certainly would have planned to leave earlier if we'd known! And the transport company definitely should have checked, too.

Still blissfully unaware of impending disaster...

Soon after we got underway, the driver checked his GPS and realized we needed to take a detour. So off we went on the scenic route. I figured our extra hour would help, but the situation was more serious than that! We were creeping along on country roads. When we finally neared the city (Boston), we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was avoiding looking at the GPS, but I saw how it kept recalculating. We were "10 minutes away" for about an hour! It was definitely torture knowing we were that close, yet stuck in traffic. There was absolutely nothing we could do.

Probably the worst part of the whole ordeal was the feeling of suspense as we waited helplessly to see what would unfold. My mom and I were texting the whole time and she had a lot of people praying for us. I knew nothing bad would happen, but I still didn't want to be in this situation. Even if we were going to make our flight, I didn't want to deal with the intensity of rushing. "I don't want to be here! I don't want to deal with this, Lord. I just want it to be over!"