After a nice brunch the morning after the wedding, we said goodbye to our friends and left for Duxbury, MA to visit our friends Aun and Tom who recently bought (and are renovating) a cool house. As I’m driving north out of Newport, wouldn’t you know it–the GPS we had specially driven to PVD to pick up decided to die! Brand new unit out of the box, either the charge cord or battery were defective and didn’t hold a charge. So, back to navigating the old fashioned way…maps and verbal directions. We arrived at our friends’ house with no problems and got a grand tour of the new abode and surrounding historical Duxbury.
Our friends have a cute dog named Izzy who was pretty excited to see Casey. Too bad Casey was a bit scared of Izzy, this being based on previous experiences with canines licking and jumping on him. We enjoyed a tasty lobstah lunch in Plymouth, MA and picked up some oysters and other goodies for dinner back at the homestead. It was fun seeing our friends who had gotten married in Duxbury almost 2 years ago when Casey was still a toddler.
The next morning, we said our goodbyes and headed for PVD to fly home. I’m convinced the Universe was conspiring to throw everything it had at us in the way of travel headaches. Our flight through Washington Dulles was cancelled (AFTER we had already gotten our boarding passes and checked in, that’s a first for me) because of weather delays and pilots not making it to their next flights. So, UA ground staff in PVD were very accommodating and rebooked us through Chicago O’Hare (again), albeit about 3 hours later than our original flight. We spent the next hours at Dunkin Donuts, quality time in the game room, and running up and down the terminal hallways.
Finally, it was time to board our flight to Chicago. Guess what??? You got it. More severe weather in Chicago. Basically, we had pushed back from the gate and were promptly slapped with a ground stop in PVD. About an hour delay, the pilot said; just enough time for us to miss our connection. Yay. How’s about an overnight in O’Hare?
Dad is freaking out the entire flight to PVD. Casey, on the other hand, is an incredible angel of a seasoned traveler at nearly 3 years of age. It was truly amazing. When we land in ORD, we decide to deplane as fast as humanly possible and check the departure screens since, hey, we were delayed inbound, maybe our connection was too? Lo and behold, our connecting flight was about 15 minutes delayed. We landed at one end of B concourse and had to get to the middle of C in about 10 minutes. Let’s go for it.
I had to stop at the men’s room, thanks to the full can of ginger ale I sucked down on the last plane, while Kirstin strapped Casey in the Ergo backpack and started off towards our gate. I promptly sprinted out of the bathroom at top speed, down the stairs and through the trippy O’Hare connector tunnel (passing Kirstin and Casey, mind you!), up the other stairs and into C concourse. As I ran up to the departure gate out of breath, I was relieved and amazed to see the flight still open for boarding. We had made our connection with literally minutes to spare. What a way to end a whirlwind weekend of transcontinental traveling!
Oh, and thanks to Google Earth, I calculated roughly 550 yards covered in under 10 minutes. Not too shabby for having run so little in the last 6 months!
Our next blog installments will recap our upcoming northern Italy trip, stay tuned!
Safe travels,
Tom
