Tears and Laughter

Well, I am writing this post in the Dallas/FW airport. it is 5:00 p.m. right now and waiting for our flight at 8:50. Seriously. We are trying to make it to Seattle to go see Luke's sister and her family, but for some reason everything is going against us. We had an hour delay in OKC which they said would make us miss our connecting flight to Seattle, so they took our boarding passes and switched them to another airline which would only put us an hour behind. When we got here, we realized we could have made our original connecting flight, but went to the new gate where they started to board when we arrived. In the middle of boarding, the captain came out and said there was a problem with the plane so we would have to stop boarding and everyone would have to get off the plane. Well, after almost an hour wait, they came back and said our flight was cancelled due to a bird hitting the plane in the previous flight which broke some part of the plane which they could not fix at this time. So all 60 passengers ran off to the ticket counter. When we got to the front of the line, they told us all direct flights for today were full, but we could either go through Oakland or if we ran, we could make a connecting flight to Portland that left in about 10 min. in a different terminal. So, with all of our bags in hand (we did not check any bags in) we took off running. By the time we got to the train stop, there was a sign that said the next train for that terminal would be 8 min. So, with our heads hung low, our backs hurting, we went back to the ticket counter and explained the situation. By this time, I'm in tears. The lady was sooo... sweet and got us first class tickets for a flight going out tonight with food vouchers. To make the day even better, as we went back through security, they looked at our boarding passes and said, "Congratulations, you have been selected to have additional screening, please step to the side." At this point I just started laughing. So, now we are at our gate with a 4 hour delay! The neat thing is that we made some friends with a family who was kind of in the same situation. Well, this is getting really long so I will stop here. I will update later in our trip if I have time. Have a good and safe Labor Day, until next time....