Adventures in air travel

We had some interesting adventures on the way from Derby to Massachusetts. We woke up early the day our flight was scheduled and rode in a shuttle van to the Birmingham airport. Upon reaching the desk to check in for our flight, we realized that we were missing River’s passport. We did have two faux passports for the kids’ stuffed animals which looked similar enough that the stack of passports seemed thick enough to contain all the passports. But River’s passport was not among them. We decided that Sage and I should continue to check in and get our baggage aboard the plane while Molly and River returned home to find the missing passport.

Sage and I eventually arrived in Hartford as scheduled, but River and Molly were unable to get back to Birmingham in time for the original flight. They ended up arranging a flight from London Heathrow to Hartford and embarked on another journey. They took a taxi to the local train station, rode the train to London, and caught the Underground to the airport. On arriving at JFK, they found they had missed their connection to Hartford and eventually managed to find a rental car that brought them the rest of the way to Massachusetts. In all, they spent 26 hours en route, tallying nine different forms of transport.

It was interesting hearing River tell this story to a group of friends the other night. She did a great job keeping the narrative going and it was fun to hear about the trip from her perspective. I made sure to double check the passports before our return flight. I don’t that’s a mistake likely to be made more than once. Fortunately, our return journey yesterday was mostly uneventful. We did have some drama in Hartford when our flight was scheduled to be delayed which would have caused us to miss the connection in Newark. Ultimately, it left on time. We did have another delay in Newark due to a tornado alert in the New York City area, but after craziness of the first journey it seemed quite smooth.