A very, very long day

Our return flight to Spokane was scheduled to depart at 1100 hours.....of course, as you know, on any travel day I am awake early thinking about what has to be done in order for us to stay on schedule.......have I said I hate schedules?  I'm sure I have....at any rate I was awake at 0500....I tried to go back to sleep, but by 0520 I decided to get up....there are always naps.

Originally we had planned to leave for the airport at 0900, but were ready to go by 0830, so we just decided to go and wait at the airport.....there's no penalty for being early, is there?  We had to gas up the rental car (Budget - Toyota Prius hybrid) before we dropped it off, so that would eat up some time....I thought.  We had used half a tank driving close to 250 miles during our stay, but it only took 4.9 gallons.....that's like over 50 miles a gallon!  The Newell wouldn't even go 50 miles on that amount of fuel.   So, we drop the car off by 0900, and take the shuttle ride over to the Southwest terminal to check our one piece of luggage (way too big to put in the overhead bins), get our boarding passes, and go through security (once again we were both TSA pre-checked) where TLE, not I for a change, was flagged for more frisking.  The scanner thought she was concealing some metal object(s) around her knees and hips.....of course she wasn't.......if you will recall the scanner flagged me for GSR (gun shot residue) on our way out of Spokane 5 days earlier.........of course, there was none.  I haven't fired a gun in over 2 years....I'm pretty sure that GSR was no longer present on my person.

"Serenity now...."

We had barely gotten to gate 407 at 0930 when we saw that our 1100 departure time was delayed until 1130 due to weather.....somewhere else.....so now we we're really early.  We don't panic as our connecting flight in Phoenix is scheduled for 1355 hours, and we will still arrive with over 90 minutes before the flight to Spokane is scheduled to leave.  We planned to get lunch in between flights as our arrival time in Spokane was to be 1600.

We end up not taking off until 1145 so the window is shrinking......then we are advised after we are airborne that we are being re-routed around some weather between Ontario and Phoenix, meaning we will overfly Las Vegas adding miles and time.  We finally arrive in Phoenix around 1315 thinking we've only got 10 minutes before they start boarding......still no big problem.  We arrive at gate C6 to find that the connecting flight has also been delayed, and departure time has been pushed back to 1500, which means we will now arrive in Spokane after 1730 (5:30 pm).  We decide we now have plenty of time, once again, for lunch, so we find a small sports bar right next to our gate and settle in for a leisurely lunch watching the MLB playoff game between the Royals and Blue Jays (won by the Royals 14-2). 

Ultimately the departure time for the Spokane leg was corrected to 1440, and we arrived in Spokane at 1700 hours, picked up our one piece of luggage quickly arriving at the ground transportation lot just as our 'Diamond Park and Jet' bus arrives......perfect!  This is the second time we have parked there.....we love it because they only charge $5.99/day, and have a free carwash right there on premises, which we once again took advantage of before heading back to Cheney and our Newell.....we were home by 1830 (after a quick stop at the supermarket) and unpacked and relaxing by 1900.......yup, that was a very, very long day!

Thanks for stopping by!