Traveling "Flightmare"

For Christmas break, Luke and I were able to visit my side of the family in New Hampshire. We had a wonderful time! We were even able to spend some time with family and friend that we hadn't seen since our wedding day, July 9, 2016.

Sadly, our break came to an end all too soon. It was an odd feeling realizing that this was the last time we would have to fly back to St. Vincent. We would like to come back and visit our friends here in the future and hopefully provide medical assistance. Our flight was scheduled to leave Boston early on a Saturday morning and after catching a few connections, arrive in St. Vincent late that evening. The Thursday before we left, was the "bomb cyclone" that caused many cancellations for flights out of Boston. My sister lives near Boston and kept asking me about our flight status. We kept an eye on it, but everything was on time. My parents brought us to my sister's apartment the night before our flight, so we could be closer to the airport. For me it was a tearful goodbye. I try not to cry, but I just get overwhelmed with how grateful I am for them, and it is harder to say goodbye when there is no scheduled time when I will see them again. My brother-in-law, Matt drove us to the airport, and everything went extremely well. Checking in and getting through security took hardly any time at all. Even boarding our flight went well. The plane was nice and comfortable with individual screens on the back of each seat where we could watch movies or play games. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6am. A little after 6am they informed us that they were having issues fueling the plane and that they were getting a fuel truck. A while later they informed us that the fuel valve was frozen and that the fuel truck was unsuccessful. A few minutes after that, we were told we could leave the plane, but we wouldn't be able to board again and because of the previous storm, we wouldn't get a connecting flight out of Boston until Monday at the earliest. At this point, we still had time to make our connection in Charlotte, so we stayed on.  Next, we were informed that we were moving two gates over because a plane had successfully fueled there and took off. By this time, we realized we would miss our connection. We had automatically been rescheduled to leave Charlotte to Miami on Sunday and Miami to Barbados Sunday night. This would be too late to get a flight to St. Vincent, so we would spend two nights in airports or hotels, with no guarantee that the airline would cover cost of hotels, food, or transportation. We started checking other available flights, and I realized we could do the whole trip on Tuesday, which meant only arriving one day later and saving money because we could stay with family. We spoke to the ticket agent they had brought on the plane, and after 2.5 hours of sitting on the plane at the gate, we exited the plane. They had started fueling the plane, but only half of it was fueled, before they realized they needed to do some maintenance. (The plane did not leave until 9:45). We rescheduled our flights with both airlines. We were told that it was too late to get our bags off of the plane. They said our bags would go to Charlotte with the plane but would be put on a flight back to Boston that same day. There were six flights to Boston from Charlotte just that night, so I thought it would be ok. They also said that at the very worst, our bags would go to Miami, but they would not leave the country without us. We soon discovered that all of that was a big lie. Matt came and picked us up and we stayed with them until Sunday afternoon while we waited for our bags. Luke called multiple times to ask about the status of our bags. He spent hours on hold. At one point, he asked the lady at the Charlotte airport to go out and look for the bags instead of just telling us what the computer said. She did, but she forgot about Luke. Almost an hour later, he hung up and called her back. After days of calling different airports trying to find our bags and being promised many things, we discovered that our bags had gone all the way to Barbados and were on their way back to Boston. We were told that our bags were on a flight from Miami to Boston that would arrive at 6pm. Luke called again after 6pm only to find that they were supposed to be on a flight arriving at 9:50pm. Luke told them he would call back at 10pm. He did, and they told him the flight was delayed until 11pm. We needed to get some sleep before traveling all day, so Luke asked them to call us if our bags arrived on that flight. After a few hours of sleep, we woke up, realizing that they had not called us. We took a Lyft to the airport and headed straight for baggage claim. We had to leave our winter coats at the apartment, so thankfully it was at least above zero degrees that day. The first baggage claim room we went to did not have our bags. Thankfully, there was a guy working there who said there was another room we could check. I was praying the whole time we walked to the other side of the airport. As soon as we walked up to the other area, Luke spotted our bags! They were slightly battered, but I have never been so relieved to see bags before! 

A little worse for wear, but at least we had them!

Unfortunately, this time checking in and security took forever! They even pulled my purse out of line to swab each package of Christmas candy that I had in there. There were some other small annoyances we had to deal with, but overall, once we began our journey back, it went pretty well. 

Leaving Boston

We made it safely back to St. Vincent, and Luke successfully started his fifth and final island term!