Journey to the West

The past few days have been completely nuts. Ryan and I had a trip planned to LA leaving in the evening on Wednesday (1/12) but because of the impending blizzard, we thought it would be smarter to leave a day earlier and *hopefully* avoid the snow storm. There was an important meeting scheduled that we absolutely could not miss. Ryan rushed home from work and we scrambled to pack and get ourselves to the airport.

So, we arrive at Westchester County Airport on Tuesday at 7PM (first of all, who knew there was an airport in Westchester?) and were told that the plane we needed to board to get to DC was still on the ground in DC. Our flight was delayed. Boo. Then, we were told that because the flight to DC was delayed, we would be missing our connecting flight to LA. Boo again. They booked us on the next flight out to LA - a good 11 hours later, a little after 8AM Wednesday morning. Boo x3. We thought, hey! as long as we get there on Wednesday, we'll be fine. Three hours later, they announced that our flight to DC was canceled. At this point, we were tired, frustrated, and slightly delirious - it already started snowing hard and we were told that all fights on Wednesday from all NY airports were canceled. What could we do to get to LA?

So like the bright, intelligent and, at this point, mentally deranged people we are, we rented a car to drive down to DC (did I mention that the blizzard was coming up from DC?) A trip that should have taken us 4 hours took almost 8. For the first half of the drive, the snow was so bad that we could barely see the road, much less go faster than 20 miles an hour. I was surprised we made it at all! Thankfully we rented a big SUV with 4 wheel drive (we owe you our lives, Avis guy). Otherwise this post would probably have ended with, "we got stuck in a snow ditch off the side of the highway" - something we saw plenty of on our little road trip. By the time we got to Dulles International Airport (which, FYI, is apparently NOT in DC but in Virginia... but anyway...) We were officially incoherent but very thankful the flight to LA was not canceled. 23 hours later, we arrived in sunny LA, safe and sound.

Of course, now that we're rested.. kinda (I think it may take me a few days to completely get over this absurd trip) I realized that in the chaos at the beginning of our adventure, I didn't pack very much except cardigans and tights. I know it's warm here but I think I need articles of clothing to cover my toosh. :) At the very least, Ryan made it to his meeting... and this was an interesting adventure - something Ryan and I will be talking and laughing about for years to come.

A few side notes:

+ Working for an airline is a thankless job. We don't pay much attention to airline employees when things go as planned but they feel our wrath when things go awry. Thank you to the United Airlines ladies at the Westchester County Airport that really took the time to help us book and rebook our flights when our first flight was canceled. I do have gripes about United Airlines as a company as well as their planes but I'll leave that for another day...

+ I want to apologize to Ashley of A Hasty Life as well as the other participants of her "It's In The Bag" blog crawl. I was scheduled to post yesterday but in midst of our rush to get to the airport, it slipped my mind. I'll post mine early next week :) To check out the other posts, see her schedule here.

+ Lastly, we'll be back to regularly scheduled posts on Monday. In the meantime, have a fabulous weekend folks!


Image sources: here and here