Steph and I have officially made it to New Orleans, Louisiana! We never thought we would get here with all the issues we had yesterday trying to hop from plane to plane, but here we are in a sweet hotel room with a beautiful view and one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in.

We started out at 3am on Friday getting ready to leave, and we thought we would have plenty of time to get to the airport and be well on our way to Houston (our first hop). Unfortunately, we didn’t really get on the road until about 3:40, still thinking we would definitely make it. Well, our hopes were crushed as soon as we walked in the doors the airport. Security was backed up to the door and it looked like the wait time would be 25 minutes at the least. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 6am and it was 5:20. We ran up the stairs to try to check our bags and got in line. It took us a couple more minutes to get up to the kiosk, now 5:26, and then we had problems getting it to find our reservation. After we got it settled, thanks to the already stressed staff, we tried to check our bags: FAIL! The bags had to be checked at least 35 minutes before take off. It was now 5:28. The staff was able to check our bags and told us to go, but we probably weren’t going to make it.

We went all the way back downstairs to get in the line for security, only to hear the security guard tell everybody they were opening up the alternative security gate BACK UPSTAIRS! So we wandered back upstairs with the mob of all the other late people, when we could have just stayed upstairs and been at the front of the line. It figures it would happen that way. We managed to get through security without a problem, 5:50, and ran to the trains to head to the concourses. We jumped on those and rode it to the concourse we were supposed to be in, headed up the escalator, and started speed-walking to our gate. It was now 5:59. We arrived at the gate to see the jetway pulled back. Disaster!

We walked up to the gate and talked to a guy named Ed from Continental. Nicest guy I’ve ever dealt with at an aiport. He hooked us up with a flight to Houston at 8am, a mere 2 hours after our original flight was to leave. Not too shabby. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a single flight to New Orleans that wasn’t full. He didn’t think we would make the connecting flight we should be on, and we didn’t either, so he dropped us on standby for the next flight out. That one was scheduled to leave at 11:45. We can deal with that, just a slight setback. The only thing about being on standby is that you have no idea if you have tickets or not until you get there. So we went to grab a bite to eat and boarded our flight to Houston at 7:45. Things were starting to look up, and we figured if we could just get to Houston we could drive if we couldnt’ get on a plane.

More on this later. Gotta go meet my parents for breakfast. TO BE CONTINUED!