illguthlife: Getting Home

The only down side to the free flights we get though Brandon's job is that they are standby flights. We aren't guaranteed a seat. So Tuesday morning Brandon and I geared up for a long day at the airport.

Originally we were scheduled to try fly out on the 7:10 flight. But I was not looking forward to how early we would have to wake up in order to drive to the airport, return the car, get through the ticket line, get through security, and make it to the gate - and possibly not get a seat. So Brandon changed our itinerary so we would try to make it for the 1:45 flight.

The rental car had to be back at 11:00 so we did that first. The rental car place reminded me of some sort of futuristic space port. It is brand new and really big and echoie. It is kind of far from the airport so there are shuttles that take you to the terminals. We took the one to terminal 4.

At the ticket line the agent told us that the 1:45 flight was already overbooked by one person so our chances of making it on that flight were slim. She recommended not checking the car seats because we wouldn't want them going to Salt Lake without us. She was kind enough to get us a push cart for free. We had the girls in the stroller and everything else on the push cart.

We went through security without any really problems. Brandon did not have to get a pat down this time. The girls had their bottles with them and so the bottles had to get tested, but that wasn't a big deal. I though the TSA agents were very nice about everything. Once we got through security we headed over to our gate and waited. We let the girls play on the floor and just ignored any thoughts about how dirty it must have been. I took the opportunity to blog about our weekend.

The girls enjoyed watching the planes out the windows. The 1:45 flight came and everyone boarded it. One standby passenger got on and that was it. The next flight to SLC wasn't until 4:15 so we decided to go exploring.

Terminal 4 has 8 concourses. Four on each side of the road that runs through the airport. There is a sky bridge that connects the two sides. We walked down each concourse. I would guess it is a mile from the A gates to the D gates. Add the fact that we went down each one and it was probably a 1 1/2 mile walk. The girls fell asleep while we walked. It was fun to see what was down each concourse. They had restaurants and gift shops and of course airplanes.

We made our way back to the A gates and tried to find an outlet so I could keep blogging. We thought that we had found a good one and I got all set up and even took this picture. But the outlet didn't work! Brandon walked around and tested all the outlets with his cell phone charger. Lots of them didn't work. Finally we found one in the column in the background of this picture.

The girls woke up and we fed them. We did this a couple times during the day. At one point Charlotte had green beans in her hair and Lydia had some in the corner of her eye. They looked like little refuge children by the end of the day.

Brandon found out that there were 10 standby people ahead of us for the 4:45 flight. Still we were hopeful. We waited as everyone boarded. There were four empty seats and six people who didn't show up for the flight so all the standby people got excited. But as the agents were starting to call people's names for standby the 6 people ran up to the gate. Only 4 standby people got on the flight.

Brandon and I decided to go get dinner. We could have gone to a familiar place like Burger King or Pizza Hut, but we wanted to go to somewhere we had never been. This was an adventure after all. (And we figured if we went somewhere unfamiliar we wouldn't know how much they were overcharging us)

We walked through all the concourses again and picked out this Mexican restaurant in the D concourse. It was really good.

Then we walked all the way back to wait for the 8:10 flight. I haven't been inside an airport concourse since before 9-11 so it was really fun for me to see everything. I used to love going to the airport to drop my mom off when she went back East, or when family members would go on and come back from missions. Plus the Phenoix airport was really cool looking. It has lots of levels and it's like a really big maze.

The 8:10 was the last flight of the night so we decided that if we missed it we would just hang out and the airport all night. The girls could sleep in the stroller or maybe even their car seats that we were still rolling around with us. We would stay up and watch funny Youtube movies. We figured it would be better to wait at the airport and be ready to leave on the 7:10 the next morning than leave and have to come back early.

Well we didn't have to do that. The 8:10 wasn't full. Before boarding began the agents called all standby passengers up to the desk to get tickets. We were able to board first with all the other people travelling with children under 5. (Yeah that's right- ahead of the 1st class people)

Brandon got a seat in the very back of the plane. I was right next to him with a window seat, but I had to trade it away since 5 people can't be on a row. I ended up in front of Brandon.

The flight home was fun. Both girls were awake and in good moods. We would let them look at each other over the seat back. They would laugh and giggle. Charlotte enjoyed destroying a SkyMall magazine. Lydia wet her diaper and it soaked through and got Brandon wet. He got up to change it just as we hit turbulence. So now Brandon can brag that he has changed a baby's diaper at 20,000 feet in the air during turbulence.

We landed and it was so weird to walk out on to the Salt Lake concourse. It wasn't as familiar as the Phoenix ones. Our flight had been delayed getting to Phoenix and with the time change too we didn't land until about 11:00 Utah time. (AZ doesn't celebrate daylight savings time) We stopped by Brandon's airline so he could introduce us to some of his co-workers. It was interesting to finally see where Brandon has been spending the past year.

Then we got on the employee shuttle and road out to the parking lot. The girls were asleep by then and we put them in the Jeep and headed home. At home we changed the girls into clean onesies (the ones they were wearing were so gross from the airport floor) and went to bed. Everyone, including the girls, slept until 10:00 AM the next day.