Yesterday was the longest travel day I may have ever been through...literally and figuratively.
Literally, because a flight from Columbus to Anchorage is 12 hours out of your day when everything is on time. If your plane leaves Columbus an hour late, things seem to get longer. Then when your plane leaves Phoenix late - because in the world according to US Airways Phoenix is between Columbus and Anchorage - things seem to get drawn out even further.
In reality, we landed in Anchorage 10 minutes later than our original time. The worrying about connections and everything else was for naught, we got here right on time. Right on time was 12:00 am Alaska time...4am EDT for those of you scoring at home. Leaving Columbus at 5:10 for a 11 hour trip means it's gonna be late when you get there.
Figuratively the longest day because Brendan and Alex were on the trip. Both have flown, but it's been a while, so both were pretty excited about flying on the "big hairplane." (Alex's words) Their excitement lead to neither of them sitting still the entire trip between Columbus and Phoenix. Not bad, we had a row to ourselves, but only one parent gets to sit in a three seat row with the boys, so no tag teaming them. Unable to tag out until 3:15 minutes into the 4:15 minute flight, dad was worn out...and this was the short leg of the flight.
Upon arriving in Phoenix, our plane's original departure of 7:20 has been pushed back to 7:45 according to the board at the gate. Cool, we've got 50 minutes before we board another plane for the final leg to ANC. Enough time to get a bite to eat and get some Benedryl in the boys. Or, so we thought...
US Airways, front runner as my choice of "Biggest PITA Airline Ever," announces that the plane will board on time. Not a big deal, except Wendy's with the luggage while the boys and I are halfway down the terminal looking for something to eat. (There was a Burger King sign down there, figured that would to the trick.) During negotiations on what to eat - which weren't going well - Wendy comes running up. She's got both pull-carry on bags, my laptop bag, the camera bag, and both the boys backpacks. She was a funky hat short of looking like a Sherpa. I look at her funny and get, "WE'RE BOARDING!! WE'VE GOT TO GO!!" We get her load lightened, and get back to the gate. Needless to say, tensions were running high. We didn't get anything to eat, had no time to settle down from the last flight, and are now being told we need to get on the plane to leave on time. AND the magic of the Benedryl hadn't been brought out, and without food in him, Brendan wasn't cooperating. "The Incident" then happened...there was yelling, crying, an attempt at force, more yelling, louder crying, more yelling, etc, etc. Somewhere in Phoenix, children's services is probably looking for a man who fits my description.
Thankfully, the Benedryl did it's thing - Brendan eventually took his, in exchange for getting the window seat - so the flight from Phoenix to Anchorage was pretty uneventful. Well, other than being damn near 6 hours long, it was pretty uneventful. I got a movie in, both boys slept, Wendy slept, and we still had three hours to go. Those three hours eventually passed, and we landed in Anchorage just after midnight local time. Mom met us at the bottom of the escalator, and we proceeded to wait on the bags. And wait. And wait. Got the bags, threw them in Mom's car, and Brendan and I went to wait on the shuttle to get to the rental car. And wait. Got on the shuttle, got to the counter and, yup, you guessed it, waited some more. All the waiting was finally over around 2am, and we were in bed by about 2:10.
Hopefully in the coming days I'll add some more from the trip, hopefully a few pictures. Tuesday we're on a train to Seward, and that should produce some good pictures.
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