Planes, Planes, and OOPS Canceled Flights

YUP! You guessed it. Another stay over in the airport hotel in San Juan. I shouldn't be surprised. Getting back to the island was proving to be harder than I thought.
We left Alamosa, at 6:30 in the morning, oh wait!!! We didn't leave the Alamosa airport because some idiot there didn't have the plane ready! So we waited with an awake Tyson for 45 minutes before we could board the little peddle jumper plane that was taking us to Denver. Now, since this plane was late, we knew it would be a rush to make our plane in Denver, and we were right! Once they let us off the plane in Denver, we ran, again, to the ticket counter to get our tickets only to find out that our plane was delayed. YES! This was good news, we could actually get breakfast and slow down a bit. We had a 3 hour layover in Dallas so this delay in Denver cut that down to an hour. No worries. The day was looking up. (Boy did I jinx us again!)

We had breakfast, walked around the airport, found our terminal and got on our plane headed to Dallas. Now here is where the story gets a bit scary.....We are on the runway, actually taking off, with the nose of the plane in the air and the engines shut down. My heart sunk down to my stomach. We were going to crash and burn right there on the runway!!! Luckily the pilot touched it down carefully and taxied us back to the terminal gate. He came over the speakers and said that there was a malfunction with the landing gear and we had to get off of the plane in order for them to fix it. At least they found this out before we took off completely and couldn't land in Dallas. So we waited for 1 hour while they fixed the plane. Tyson had lots of fun going up and down the escalator.

Finally we were allowed back on the plane and the flying resumed. We also figured that we now had 10 minutes to get to our connecting flight. We figured that our luggage would be lost forever, and that that moment in time we didn't care. We darted off the plane and briskly walked down the hall way to our next flight, which they were already boarding. We were all hungry for lunch so Vaughn quickly ran to a pretzel shop and bought some pretzels and drinks and we boarded our plane. What a deal!! This flight from Dallas to San Juan is about 5 hours. Lucky us! We ate our pretzels and then bought us some of the airline food and were doing well. Tyson was a bit restless for 2 hours but then settled into another nap. About 4 hours into the flight I was ready to scream. My butt felt like a cement brick, and my legs were screaming to walk. The last hour drug on, and to make matters worse, we were going to have to sprint again to another airplane that was leaving 20 minutes after we touched down. ARG!!!!

The stroller took forever to be brought up, so we left it and sprinted to our gate, only to find out..............that the plane was delayed....what else is new!!! Vaughn walked back to our last terminal and retrieved the stroller and came back to where we were waiting, again. I think I did something wrong in a past life and will be punished for it every time I get on a plane. What is the deal?

10 minutes later, we hear "Flight 270 to St. Maarten has been canceled." What the hell!???? Are you serious? I have to spend the night here? Oh for the love of Aunt Mabel!!! Oh, and we did. By this time it is 10:30 at night and we are tired, hungry and lost n the Caribbean and all we can do is laugh. It was more of a laugh cry for me, but a laugh nonetheless. Lucky us, the airline put us up in the airport hotel for the night and gave us 40 dollars in meal vouchers. Now that seems all fine and dandy, but the restaurant was a sushi one and didn't have much for toddlers. I was smart enough to pack some oatmeal packets in my suitcase, (which by the way, surprisingly made it all the way to San Juan), and so we mixed up Tyson some of that for his dinner. What a night.

The flight out of San Juan was 45 minutes late leaving the next morning, but that didn't surprise us. I couldn't wait to get back to St. Maarten and I was shocked I was actually thinking this, but I was ready to be off of the planes for a while. So, in a nutshell, we made it back and life is just the same as when we left it. Only 90 days left to go until the next plane saga!!!!