Up bright and early with our carry on bags packed, we headed to Newark Airport to catch a United flight through DC to San Antonio. I'll preface the story to come by saying that connecting flights never work for me, ever. I avoid them at all costs. But no direct flights were available from Newark to San Antonio, so on to DC we flew.
Or should I say, planned to fly. Boarding is about to begin, and the gate representative gets on the loud speaker. She tells us that the plane is "broken" - what? - and that we are indefinitely delayed. My husband took off immediately to the customer service desk, since we knew our connection in DC was tight and we would likely miss that flight. He was second in line - good running there, hon! My daughter and I sat at the gate with the "broken plane" story repeated over the loud speaker. Then suddenly, we were boarding! Hubby came back and said he had us booked on two flights now from DC to San Antonio, our original flight and another one five hours later. Well, we are boarding so it seems we will make the first connection and all is well in travel land.
We board the plane, get nestled into our seats, and start reading our books. Ready to go! Until. The flight attendant gets on the loud speaker: "There is a problem with the lavatory and maintenance is looking at it right now. We will update you as soon as we can." GROAN. We sit. We wait. The next announcement comes: "We can't fix the lavatory right now, but we did get permission to fly to DC without a working bathroom because it is only a 50 minute flight. We would like to take off as soon as possible but if anyone needs to use the bathroom they can use the one back in the terminal." Click. Click. Click. Seatbelts start unfastening and people are getting off the plane to use the bathroom. I can't even believe this - let's just get in the air, people! Pee in the District of Columbia!
Ok, so everyone goes to the bathroom and gets back on the plane. Let's fly! But wait...now the pilot is talking to us. He is apologizing; he can't believe this is happening and he is so sorry, but a piece of the plane door fell off while they were closing it.Time to get off this plane and find a new plane.
The guy behind me has been yelling since before we boarded. I assume he has not flown before or not flown often, because the whole idea that travel does not always go smoothly is a new concept and he can not deal. Everyone else is mostly calm and collected; there's nothing you can do about this stuff, so don't yell at the flight attendants. Don't yell at the gate reps. This is not their fault.
We finally leave Newark, sometime just after our connecting flight has left DC. So we resign ourselves to the fact that we are getting to San Antonio at night. We are missing the Mardi Gras parade. We are not going to be able to go swimming. We have spent Valentine's Day in two different airports rather than in Texas. But whatever. We have beer and we have books, so we chill and we drink and we read, and we will get to Texas when we get there.
And that's a lesson we have learned from extensively traveling: Go with the flow. You have to keep your patience and expect things to not go as smoothly as you like. You have to be prepared to create your Plan B on the fly. You have to deal with delays and kinks in your plans. And most of all, you have to not let it ruin your trip. With a start like this, it could have soured us all for the duration. But we kept on keeping on and had a wonderful trip after all.
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