Yesterday’s trip home took approximately 23.5 hours, not that I was counting.

It was fantastic.

The flight from Moscow to Atlanta was fine. I only got about two hours of sleep, but the flight felt like it went fast. It was once I got to Atlanta that everything went to hell.

At first our flight was just delayed for 20 minutes – not fantastic, but not overly terrible. Then we needed to change terminals – not a big deal, it happens. As we were on the escalator to our new gate though, it died. Thankfully it wasn’t nearly as long as the one in Moscow, and when escalators quit, they just turn in to stairs.

But then the rain came. It poured, it thundered, it lightninged. They closed the airport because of the weather.

That’s right they closed the airport, which meant no planes were allowed to land. This was more than just a minor travel annoyance, it was a big freaking deal. The plane that was supposed to come and take me to Virginia was instead rerouted to Knoxville. This meant that when the airport did open again my airplane was in Tennessee. I was not in Tennessee. I was in Atlanta and wanted to be in Virginia. I was not a happy girl.

So we were waiting for the plane to come from Knoxville when Delta decided to just give us a different plane. At this point it’s already an hour and a half after the time we were originally supposed to leave. The new plane finally shows up, they get all the people off of it and let us on. Once everyone is seated on the plane they announce that we’re going to have to sit for a bit longer because they just realized that the brakes on the plane need to be replaced.

Seriously.

We’re all on the plane and they’re going to call Triple A or whoever to come out, jack the plane up, and change the brakes? Now I’ve had family members change my brakes a couple of times (thanks Steven, Dad, Uncle Pete, and Dave) and they have always tested the car before they let me in it. It’s a good idea and nice of them, you know, make sure everything is safe. I really think I’d like it more if airlines had the same thought process. You know, test the brakes once or twice before you fill it full of people and take off. Heck, they didn’t even need to go through an actual landing, I’d have been happy if they’d gone down the runway real fast and tried stopping quick.

But the guy I saw out my window that was carrying the wrench (and not in a confidence inspiring way) apparently had the situation under control. We took off and landed (at about 11:30) fine. Once we got to the airport though, they didn’t have a gate for us. So we had to wait on the runway until they brought a people mover out to us. Here’s a people mover, just in case you haven’t had the pleasure of riding on one before. It’s not my photo obviously, because it was dark out.

Eventually I did get to where Dave was waiting for me and then we got to spend an hour waiting together for my luggage. Yeah, they started unloading bags from my flight when the conveyor belt jammed. At this point I was convinced that one of my bags would not show up at all and the other would be full of broken glass and vodka soaked dirty clothes, because that would be the perfect end to my evening.

But both bags did appear (the vodka was fine) and we ended up getting home a little after 1:00 am. We had just enough energy to bring in my luggage (when I say “we”, I mean Dave) and were both asleep by 1:30. Which was good because someone’s alarm (when I say “someone’s”, I mean Dave’s) went off at 5:30. This same someone hit snooze like 20 times so we could listen to it repeatedly. Awesome.

We (yes, really both of us here since I was wide awake too at this point) got up at 6:30. He finished packing and was on the road by 7:30 to head to Alabama. So if you don’t count time time spent at the airport, driving home, packing, or sleeping, we had about 40 minutes together.

So now I’m home without him, fighting jet lag and a month’s worth of dirty clothes. I won the laundry war (4 loads and not a single casualty) which is a pretty big accomplishment because the jet lag is kicking my butt.