3/7/08 getting home

It was after 3:00am Saturday when I finally got home to Farmington, ME. We left our hotel at 8:00am Friday. That is a L O N G trip. Of course, there is the 3 hour time difference, but even accounting for that, it was a long time to be in planes, airports, and cars.

As described earlier, when we got to the Vegas airport, we found out we were leaving on a flight to Atlanta that was leaving over an hour later than our original flight to JFK. The flight to Atlanta left on time but we got put in a holding pattern for 40 minutes over Atlanta. It was hard to hear the pilot over the intercom when he was explaining it, but it seemed it was weather related. The good news is, when there's a weather delay, it generally effects all flights and that was true for us. Our next flight was scheduled to leave at 8:10 which we would've missed, but it was now scheduled to leave at 9:30. [We timed our walk to the gate where we would've been leaving from. We got to that gate at exactly 8:10. We'll never know if they would've held the plane for us or not.]

It was closer to 10 when the direct flight to Portland finally left. We landed in Portland around 12:30am only to find out that though we made the transfer in Atlanta, our luggage didn't. Now add close to an hour to 1.) wait for all the luggage to get off the plane and find out yours isn't in the lot and 2.) fill out paperwork so that you can hopefully get reunited with your suitcase. That's what we did. All 5 of our suitcases between the 3 of us were enjoying their stay in Atlanta and wouldn't get back to Maine until Saturday.

We left the airport around 1:00am. I drove Beth home to New Sharon (about 12 miles away from Farmington). It was close to 3 when we got there. It was rainy but fortunately above freezing, so it was slow going but not too frightening. When we got to her house there was a light on and she recognized the silhouette of her son in the window. I later found out that the family had received a phone call from Beth's sister asking if she was home yet and that woke them up so they all just waited up. There were flowers and everything. :-) I was home by 3:15 and without any luggage to unpack, I was able to get to bed pretty quickly after that. Praise God for a safe and happy trip.