The Taylor Family: Flying the (not so) Friendly Skies

Our adventure actually started Tuesday night. Peter and I were finishing our last bit of running around, completing our errands, and marking the final things off our check list as we packed for our trip to Hong Kong. My mom had arrived and was going to spend the night so Peter and I could get up early to make our flight in the morning. We had tucked all the children into bed and gave them extra kisses and hugs because we knew that they would be asleep when we snuck out of the house before the sun rose the next day. Peter was working at his computer when he got an email that informed him that our first flight (one to Newark) had been cancelled. There was no other information in the email so he quickly picked up the phone and called our airline, United. The wait time was 40-50 minutes so he set the phone down on speaker and continued his work. I went upstairs to take a shower and talked to my mom a bit and when I came back down it was only a few minutes before Peter got someone on the phone. They informed him that we had been put on a later flight to Newark tomorrow morning but we would still catch our connecting flight to Hong Kong but we would only have about 40 minutes to do so. That was fine, we can work in a tight schedule. We were grateful to have a couple of extra hours to sleep too. Yesterday morning we got up and got to see the kids again. We prayed together as a family and then Peter loaded up the car and we gave out some more hugs and kisses and were on our way. We were meeting Peter's dad, Mike, at my mom's house where we were going to drop of our car and Mike was going to give us a ride to airport. We moved all the luggage over and headed to Orlando International. We talked and finally started to get excited now that everything we could have done was done and everything we forgot was behind us. About 30 minutes from the airport Peter pulls up the United app on his phone and finds out that both our flights had been cancelled. Mike finds a place to pull over and Peter calls the airline. This time the wait is only 20 minutes long so we sit and wait, nothing more we could really do. When Peter gets someone on the phone she tells him that we have been reassigned to a new flight, one that doesn't leave until Friday and that now has 2 layovers instead of the single layover we had paid for. She tells us we will leave from Orlando to Houston, catch a flight to Chicago, and then head to Hong Kong, adding several hours of flying and layover time with it. We don't accept this and Peter gets her to give us more options, after all we are packed and ready to go right then and have taken the time off of work and Vandita and Anupam are expecting us there the following night. The agent offers us the same route we had today only that left today. Because the cancellation was due to weather being severe in Newark we weren't sure we wanted to risk that again. Our other option was to fly to San Francisco and then to Hong Kong the next day. We chose the latter. Mike took us back to our car at my mom's and we tried to figure out what our plan for the day was. We were about half way to the airport from there and our flight to SF was scheduled to leave at 7am which would mean we would have to leave our house around 3am to give us enough time for all the driving and security. We put all the luggage in back in our car and figured first we would go to the Apple Store in the mall to see if they could fix Peter's iPhone which kept dying. They didn't have any open appointments but told us to come back in an hour. In the mean time we did a little shopping at the mall and some research. We stopped at George's Music to return some cables Peter had been carrying around for a few months and made a game plan. We decided that we would get a hotel room near the airport so we could get a little bit more sleep. Mike had said he would take us back and this way he wouldn't have to get up super early either, we would just have him drive us to the airport this evening and after we checked in and got our seat assignments we would take the shuttle back to the hotel. Peter got a new battery for his phone and we had a nice lunch at Panera while looking at room rates and made sure mom and Vandita knew the new plan. We had a bit of time to kill before Mike was going to drive us so we hit another mall and did a little more shopping. We stopped at a drug store to pick up allergy meds (one of the things we forgot to grab at home) and just took our time. We may not be on our way to Hong Kong just yet but we still enjoyed each other and made the best of it. Eventually we met up with Mike and once again moved our luggage around. We made it all the way to the airport this time and only waited a short period

before we were all checked in and had our seat assignments for both our flights. They had so graciously put us in two completely different isles and rows when they gave us the reassignment but the agent at the desk helped us out and gave us our finalized boarding passes. We took the shuttle to our hotel where we checked in and got our room. We weren't very hungry but it was dinner time so we walked down the road to Chili's. Dinner was good and uneventful, just what we needed after our long day. Back at the hotel we cleaned ourselves up, watched a little bit of tv then went to bed. This morning we got up just after 4 and caught the 4:30 shuttle back to the airport. We checked our emails and the United app to make sure there were no more surprises and everything seemed good. We got through security in no time and found our gate. We grabbed a little something to eat for breakfast and then sat just under an hour before our first flight boarded to SF. The flight was smooth and we had a window seat and a

middle seat together, thats all we really cared about. I was hoping to see the Golden Gate Bridge but the weather was cloudy and rainy so no such luck. Our layover was about 3 hours long so we had some time to kill before catching our next flight out. We had never been to the SF airport so we did some walking around and found somewhere to eat lunch. There wasn't too much to do or see so we headed back to our gate and waited for boarding. It wasn't too long, though it probably felt like it was longer, and we were finally called to board our plane. When we had our boarding ticket scanned to get on the lady said that I was in an exit row and asked if I was alright to help other people if the need arose. I was surprised to hear that and said sure and got on the plane with Peter right behind me. We found our seats next to an exit door and were happy to see we had all the leg room anyone could want! We settled in and prepared for the 14 hour and 40 minute flight. Soon we discovered the armrest between us was stationary and couldn't be brought up.

That was a little upsetting as we like to lay on each to get more comfortable (if you've every met us you know this is true where ever we are) and we found out we were sitting in front of a 1 year old who only slept or screamed the entire flight and made me reconsider the whole extra leg room thing. The plane we were on was an older version with only about a dozen tvs, rather than one in each seat back, they were even places for your cigarette ashes from when you were allowed to smoke on aircrafts. Thankfully we had plenty of things to entertain us for awhile. Peter

had loaded up our iPads with tv shows and movies and I had my Kindle and we both had our music, not to mention our new travel pillows for sleep. We watched a couple shows, ate our provided dinner of chicken and white rice and then Peter fell asleep as I read one of my ebooks. After a couple hours I feel asleep too and when I woke up we only had 4 hours to go.

Thursday, February 6

Flying the (not so) Friendly Skies

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