The (Longer Than Should Have Been) Journey Home

We left our meeting yesterday hurrying to reach the airport to try and catch the 4:45 flight out of LA instead of the 7:45 flight. The first flight would get us home around 9:30, the second around midnight. We get to the gate and are told we will be on standby but a good chance of making the flight AND whether we make that flight or the later one, our luggage will go out on the first flight.

Sure enough, we get on the first flight and are quite happy knowing we will get home at a semi-reasonable hour. As we taxi to the runway, we stop and see a couple of flight attendants talking to someone in the front our of section. We wait...and wait and then the pilot comes on to notify us that someone doesn't want to be on this plane and we have to turn around. You can imagine the conversations that started all around us. We get back to the gate, they get the guy off (he looked like he might have been a gangbanger at one time) and come on to tell us that everything's OK, that his luggage was screened and they are sure it's OK to fly with us. This raises the panic level for many people who now want to get off the plane also and about 10-12 do so. We sit and sit while the police are interviewing the guy and members of the airport staff are checking they guy's seating area and overhead area for who knows what. Finally they tell us they will remove his bag from the plane so half of the people who got off now get back on.

As the story goes, he was leaving his wife but had second thoughts (maybe it was the idea of coming to 100+ degree weather). I don't know why he couldn't have had that revelation an hour earlier before we were ready to take off but we were finally off.

Remember me saying the guy at the ticket desk said our luggage would make the first plane no matter what? HA! My luggage was leaving this morning while the luggage of the guy with me had already left and was coming this way. We had to fill out baggage claims which was an unduly slow process and then they told the other guy he would have to come back and pick his up since it was already in the air. That took another 20 minutes of calling supervisors and arguing. Finally they agreed to deliver his luggage to Decatur.

I hate stressful travel. I couldn't sleep when I got home and I feel like I've been run over by a truck this morning...but I'm home. I got to see my wife for a few minutes (she had an early day) and hug my children and that makes it all OK.