Getting to the Wedding – October 28, 29, 20th

Thursday October 28^th

Today we were supposed to be boarding a red eye (00h25) flight from San Francisco to Biloxi Mississippi via Dallas Fortworth for Jesse’s wedding.  Instead we ended up spending the night at the airport, the flight was oversold, over the next 18 hours this is a term we would become all too familiar with.

Friday October 29th

The flight left without us, the next flight to Dallas would be leaving at 6am, with 4 hours to go Justin and I found a dark corner and tried to sleep.  The night played out something like this - lying on the floor, sitting in uncomfortable waiting room chairs, freezing because we were right near the air conditioner moving away from the air conditioner into the light where it was warmer, Justin using my wrap skirt as a blanket, sitting on a chair with my scarf over his head, my pink eye mask to block out the light and my pleather jacket. I crawled under a table (because it was darker).

I couldn’t tell you how long we slept, but I can tell you that the carpet at San Francisco airport has an uncanny taco smell.

Looking at the bright side, the sunrise was beautiful - a little blessing from God.

Justin and I were bumped from about 4 oversold Dallas flights and then clued up we could fly to Dallas via Chicago, we were then bumped from another oversold Chicago flight and finally got onto the 11h00 flight to Chicago.

We got to see the leaves changing colour from the air, really pretty.

Arriving in Chicago after 5pm, we missioned to another gate and got onto a flight to Dallas.  Landing in Dallas after 7pm, we went to our gate to attempt to catch the oversold flight to Biloxi.  If you’re catching onto the common theme here, we were bumped from that one to.

The American Airlines attendant was gracious enough to give us a discount card for the Hyatt, we got to experience the heavenly luxury of showering and sleeping in a bed.

Saturday October 30^th

We got to the airport for our 8h55 flight to Biloxi, the 57 seat airplane, with about 15 people on it to off with us on it this time!  25 minutes into flying the pilot announces “Our landing gear won’t come up, we are turning back to Dallas and switching airplanes.”  You cant do anything but laugh in situations like this, especially when your informed that “we probably would have made it to Biloxi in the last plane,” and Justin tells me he heard the Captain say “ten more minutes and we would have just continued onto Biloxi.”  Never the less back in Dallas we switched planes, and sat in our new one for about 30 minutes at which point we were informed “There is something wrong with blah blah blah wing blah blah airflow the mechanic/engineer is coming out we’ll just speed tape it and hopefully be on our way soon.”

Tape the airplane, probably get there – hmmm words you want to hear when flying.

Currently I am sitting in the taped up airplane flying to Biloxi, and hoping to get to the 2 o’clock wedding.  We will probably be late, but what can you do when its taken you 42 hours to fly from San Francisco to Biloxi.