Grace On Bob... Leakage!
Airport Madness Continued.
Our line to get our identification approved had a bit of a hiccup. The woman in the front of the line had a problem with her ticket or identification or something… whatever the problem, it was causing Bob to want to visit the bathroom again, but that wasn’t possible in the middle of the security process. So our only choose was to wait there. They finally told the woman she needed to leave and she left upset, surely not getting on her plane today. We basked in a moment of gratitude that at least we had some chance of catching this second flight tonight. I observed that the agents in the Las Vegas airport take their jobs extremely seriously, they were in blue uniforms with prestigious badges, serious faces and not to be messed with. My hello sir fell on deaf ears… however we passed through and we were on our way to the scanner belts.
We decided we would choose the fastest line again this time. So we choose a line with one lone innocent looking woman. Good choice you’d think, especially now that we were down to the wire time wise once again. She was innocent enough yet unbeknown to us she had several medical related pieces of luggage. The line was at a dead stop! At this point I went into spontaneous laughter that I couldn’t control. The string of circumstances we’d been experiencing couldn’t have been more hilarious, I couldn’t have made it all up if I had brainstormed for days. I just laughed and laughed, to the point of peeing my pants. Truly, I peed my pants...not like running down my legs wet, but enough leakage to become
self conscious! And to make it all worse I had no change of clothes in my carry-on luggage, only socks in case my feet got cold. I thought I was so smart to pack those socks, now I will never travel without packing as my daughter packs for her two-year old child… always an extra pair of clothing in case of an accident.
I continued to laugh though, so much so that I was afraid security may take me to one of their security check rooms to see if I was on some kind of drugs. Soon the luggage began to move and we put our seven baskets of carry-on items onto the belt… lap tops, suit cases, shoes, sweaters, jewelry… yes I felt like I was stripping down nude… then onto the body x-ray scan. I looked at Bob and said, I hope they don’t need to check our luggage and pat down our bodies. He said, with our luck today I would be surprised if they don’t. To our great surprise and good fortune we passed the scanning and x-ray process without a pat down, and watched as the medical woman in front of us was being padded down. After getting ourselves dressed, shoes, jackets and all, we felt free as birds, excited to head to our gate.
We looked around and saw signs for every gate but ours, until we noticed a sign for our gate that notified us that we needed to take a train to our gate. Wonderful, just when we thought we were scot free we needed to take another shuttle. We took the escalator to the basement and Bob decided to read an info board and because of his dilly dallying we missed the train to our gate. I felt like a mother telling him to stay focused until we got to our gate, no dilly dallying! We waited for the next train, and lucky for Bob it came pretty quickly, and there was even a place for us to sit. We got off the train and headed for our gate which I am sure you can guess was at the very, very end of the terminal… you know those gates that are at in a circle at the far end of the terminal? Yes that was our gate, but to our luck the plane wasn’t boarding. It just so happened that it was 20 minutes delayed. Then they announced that the Vice President was flying into the airport and there would be a long delay on the tarmac. So I made a couple of phone calls to my children to say good bye. Bob heard an announcement and thought it was for us to board, but it wasn’t so he told me to “Get ready.” So I made sure to be ready… everything but my phone was packed and my passport and ticket was conveniently placed in the front pocket of my bag. I continued to talk on the phone… I told my daughter that we had just arrived at our gate and she said… WHAT? I said yes, it has been a long adventure, I will let you read it on my blog because there is most definitely not time to tell you everything now without us missing yet another flight.
Then Bob came up to me and said, “Get ready.” I nodded, yes, I am ready. He came up again a few minutes later when I was on the phone with my son and said “Get ready.” I nodded yes, I am ready. Then he came up and said, we are going to be the last people to board the plane if you don’t get off the phone and get on the plane. “Bob, why didn’t you tell me we were boarding?” Bob said, “I did” “No you didn’t,” I exclaimed. “Yes, I did, I told you to get ready.” Bob insisted. Clearly Bob and I need to work on our communication skills.
Yes, we did make it on the plane, thank goodness. It was a short two-hour flight once we took off, so no sleep for myself, and Bob was still so worked up he couldn’t sleep either. Shortly after we were in the air Bob ordered a Jack and Coke. After he swigged his drink down he stated he was feeling a bit better. We safely arrived in Houston right on time, even with the hour delay on the tarmac for our Vice President. (I have no idea why it caused such a delay.). We happily got off the plane at about 9 pm and looked for our gate. However, since our flight didn’t leave until 7am the next day there was no posting for our gate. So we wandered around the airport looking for food, my fruit was getting a bit unappealing since it was not in a refridgerator for quite some time. But my lemons were looking good, so I got some hot water and squeezed my cut lemons into the water and felt at home.
We were feeling very hungry and hadn’t found anywhere open for food yet. We spotted a Subway with a sign all lit up… our excitement raised and we raced toward our favorite sandwich shop. Our mouths watering as we headed for the counter only to find out they were closing and no longer serving food. We continued to aimlessly walk the airport looking for any kind of food other than the organic celery, red pepper and five lemons Bob was carrying around for me. We had already eaten half the grapes and left over’s from dinner the night before. To our luck we stumbled into a food court and ate some junk food that was very satisfying and delicious.
