As the voices speak...: Delayed planes and more...

My flight from Oregon to North Carolina was not as plain (or in this case, plane) and simple as I was hoping. My flight out of Oregon got delayed…and them some more and we only landed up boarding around 1:20am! This meant I missed my connecting flight out of Houston. The flight to Houston was long and also frustrating as I felt I couldn’t rest or sleep as my mind was running through scenarios….even though before my whole trip I said I’d take things, like this, as they came. We landed in Houston three minutes before my next plane was due to leave….by the time we reached the parking bay, my plane was gone without me.

Stupidity seems to rule when I don’t sleep well as I think one of my most stupidest mistakes on my whole trip was made in Houston airport, where, without thinking, I walked OUT of the security area to find out about my next flight….meaning I had to go through the WHOLE security check AGAIN!! *sigh* One learns from these mistakes though….so after standing in the security line for more than 30 minutes, I made my way to the airtrain to go to a new terminal and hope to catch the standby flight….or I’d have to catch another airtrain and head to another terminal. Tired and frustrated without any communication with the outside world (Houston airport only gave me 40min free wifi), I parked myself and my bags in a corner in hope of getting on this flight….wondering how I was going to let my friend know which flight I was on. I had let her know that I was going to be on one or the other before I ran out of wifi. I chatted with a lady who asked a lot about Africa, and was tempted to ask if I could use her phone to text my friend…but I still wasn’t sure what was happening so it wouldn’t have helped anyway. People boarded and I waited. I was the second last person on that flight! I was so relieved cause I had a window seat and thought I could catch up on some sleep…..only to find I was next to a mother and her under two year old son who, not only took my window seat, but took a liking into me and kept passing me things. He finally fell asleep and I thought ‘Yes, I can snooze’ only to hear the announcement that we were beginning out decent and would be landing in about twenty minutes.

So I arrived, finally, in North Carolina to meet my friend, who was waiting even without knowing which plane I was on, for the first time after all the years of communication, tired and frustrated with life. Jeanne did a good job though at keeping me going, entertained and awake despite all my yawns that could have easily swallowed a person.

The day of the nightmare long day…well maybe I should specify…after that nightmare of planes and airports, it because a nicer day…it was still a long day though. Jeanne and I went to a shop…the first for me, surprisingly, since my time in the states, and I was “lost” at the number of varieties of items available. Jeanne was kind enough to let us chill at her house for the rest of the day…I did my best to stay awake. I also got to meet Paul finally too. The next day was, thankfully, a bit more restful day and Jeanne was kind enough again to let me sleep in (the first time the whole holiday) before driving me around and taking me to see our head office in Cary. It was nice to meet people you work with and have worked with and to see this office you hear about it. We also went to the Wake County animal shelter where I got to look around at dogs before we headed home with Tango. We then plotted our time in New York….