Trains, Planes, and Automobiles...

I made it home for Christmas! But not without incident. :) It all started on Friday when the big storm that we had all heard rumors about finally hit. I got an email Friday morning from the BU Emergency Alert Services instructing "all non essential personnel" to leave campus by noon in order to beat the storm. I, unfortunately, was very essential that day--due to the fact that I am a TA (aka slave) and was grading the AS202 final--so I was not able to leave on or before noon. Thus, I didn't beat the storm. When I finally did leave school, the snow was coming down full force. It made it rather unpleasant to wait for the T. The snow continued all night, and I decided to leave pretty early Saturday morning just in case it took longer to get to the airport than usual. Also, my roommate had told me that the lines in the airport were insanely long so I should be sure and get there early. Thus, I left my house around 9:30. My flight was scheduled to leave at 1:30. Probably a little too far on the cautious side even for me, but I didn't have much else to do that morning anyway.

Sadly, I had no delays getting to the airport (other than that I was meeting Ryan at Gov. Center and he was a little late, but it was all good), and check-in was a breeze. I wasn't checking luggage so I just went to the self-service kiosk and it took all of 2 minutes. The line for security wasn't bad, either. I made it all the way to my gate before 11:30. Then I curled up on those oh-so-comfortable airport chairs and fell asleep. I woke up around 1 when Ryan called me to see if I made it on my flight. It's a good thing he called or I may have slept through the boarding calls. The flight boarded fairly on time and we pulled out onto the tarmac where we proceeded to wait for 2 hours for the de-icer. On the plus side, we had a movie to watch to keep us entertained. On the minus side (can you even say that?), said movie was "Fred Claus." On the plus side, they gave us free headphones. On the minus side, I missed my connection in Cincinnati practically before our plane even took off.

Realizing I was going to miss my connection, I texted my family and asked them to check if there were more flights out of Cincinnati to Salt Lake that day. I was originally supposed to go to Cincinatti, then to Las Vegas, then to Salt Lake. But I missed the boat on that one. We took off and I had to turn off my cell phone before I was able to finish my conversation with various family members, but when we (finally) landed in Cincinnati I got a text from my uncle telling me that he had rebooked me on a direct flight to Salt Lake from Cincinnati. I didn't even know he had gotten involved until that point, but it was nice. Many of the other passengers on my flight ended up having to standby to get on other flights, but I already had a ticket and a seat assigned and everything, so it was much less of a pain for me and I didn't have to wait in any long lines or anything. That took a lot of stress off. Turns out I had gotten one of the last seats on the last flight to Salt Lake that day. Else I would have had to stay overnight and wait until the next afternoon for a flight.

While I was waiting for my flight to leave, I started talking to a Canadian couple who were standing by for my flight. They were headed to Park City for a big family Christmas/skiing thing. They had also missed an earlier connection and were stressing out about getting on my flight. I eventually had to ditch them to board the plane, but I later saw them get on. Apparently some people had missed that flight because other flights were coming in late. Craziness. It was a zoo.

I finally made it to Salt Lake at around 11:30 pm, and my brother and his friend had been kind enough to wait for me even though I was much later than I had originally been planning to be there. So they took me home with them and we ended up getting in at almost 2 am. Good times. I am so glad I made it, though, and despite the missed connection, it was a lot less painful than I thought it would be--thanks to my brothers and my uncle (who managed to rebook me without even having my confirmation number or anything, wow) and all my awesome family. I am so lucky to have the family that I do.