A Snowball's Chance

It took two months but we finally had our first REAL challenge getting everyone home from our adventure. We should have suspected such on Friday of a 3 day holiday weekend.

We knew we were in trouble when we checked in at the Eugene, Oregon airport. 2 out of our 3 flights home were written in screaming red. Let me define what the airline is telling us with the colors. Green means you've got half a chance to get on this flight. Orange means that if you like to gamble you might have a chance of making it but don't bet the farm. Red mean we overbooked and there's a snowball's chance in Hades that you're going to make it.

Over the past few weeks we've had good success gambling with orange. I got a bit over confident with orange. But when it came up red I knew it wasn't a good sign.

This trip home was Eugene to San Francisco, San Francisco to LAX, LAX to San Diego or Carlsbad (whichever was available). We made it out of Eugene easily- then the fun began.

At the San Francisco airport they have screens at each gate that list the standby passengers and the number of seats still available on the plane. We were numbers 13-17 with 23 seats when we arrived. Five minutes later we we still 13-17 with 13 seats left. It went downhill from there. Miraculously (because someone on the list didn't show up) they had two spaces. We had decided in advance that if we ever had to separate, Andy would go first with one child and I'd come on a later flight. This whole idea sounded to my chivalrous husband as an almost blasphemous idea since he prides himself on taking care of his family. Stranding his wife and child in a distant airport was to him like taking the life boat from the Titanic and letting us go down with the ship. I had to convince him that 1- he needs to be sure to get back to work on Saturday and B- I'm safer waiting in an airport than driving by myself if he has to be picked up late at night at LAX or Orange County. He agreed with my reasoning and took off with our daughter to LAX- leaving me and my son in a very over crowded San Francisco airport.

Now I'm a pretty independent woman- I can generally handle most of what life throws me. However, when he walked onto that plane I felt like I got kicked in the stomach. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I depend on him to handle the challenges when we travel.

Well the good news is I'm writing this on a plane to Orange County- my husband is in route from Carlsbad to pick us up. The bad new was that we tried unsuccessfully to get on 5 planes before this one. When you are standby number 25 with 1 seat available you know you're the proverbial Hades snowball. We were that snowball for 5 different planes- and we weren't picky. We would have taken a flight to LAX, San Diego, Carlsbad or Orange County.

We've got one more week until his temp position is done for the summer. We've got one more chance to try our luck. I think I'll pray for green flights. The snowball doesn't melt so fast when the flight is green.