so close, but yet so far

Yesterday was one of those days. It seems like eons ago, that we got up at 5 a.m. to catch a shuttle to the Stuttgart airport. At that point everything was looking good. We got our boarding passes, my luggage was under the weight restriction, all our paperwork was in order to leave Germany.

As the seating at the gate was overflowing into the next area and boarding was getting ready to take place, the Delta worker announced over the loudspeaker that our plane was having some mechanical problems and they would report back in an hour. A low groan came from the crowd, but an hour was till within our 3-hour layover time we had in Atlanta.

The hour passed and this time the captain came out and announced that there was a fuel leak on the plane and the mechanical crew was working on it, it should be about another hour..."we apologize for the delay."

Surprisingly the crowd was fairly patient, what could they do? Fixing the fuel leak was a strong enough argument for patience. Finally after three hours, we were able to board, but that put our flight out of the rotation for runway usage, so another hour on the ground in the plane (I took a sleeping pill, so I got some shut eye) before we left the beautiful land of Germany.

The flight west is a lot longer than east (not sure, maybe flight route or headwinds) but it took more than 10 hours to land in the states, but the journey didn't end there.

Of course we missed our connecting flight to KCI, but getting through customs was stressful enough. Nothing moves fast in the world of the CBP. I didn't check my watch, but I would suspect it took us 2 hours, including the rescheduling of our flight home.

Nothing was available last night for us (one in our group did get on a late flight), and at first I was scheduled to go out at 1:30pm today with Shalyn and Lana at 10:50 a.m. That really made me sad, but with the persistance of the Delta employee, she found a back door way to get me on that 10:50 flight. So armed with hotel and meal vouchers, we were determined to make the best of it, knowing at least we would get a good night's rest.

My body is on a different time schedule yet so I was up early this morning and thought a little blogging would pass the time. I am so ready to see Chris and sleep in my own bed tonight. One last post when I make it home safely...