Escaping the Snow

Melbourne Marriott Hotel- One of our favorite lessons we learned in marriage counseling was to not “judge in the middle.”  Little did we know that this would be tested within the first hour of our travels.  Upon arrival at the airport, we found out our flight was delayed from 11:30 to 12:30…at this point not concerned at all (in fact it just allowed us to have a honeymoon vacation bloody…see picture). 

Pretty soon things went from promising to completely unknown as the airline was saying all planes had been grounded in Madison because O’Hare could not handle any more flights coming in due to the weather.  Delayed until 1:15.

1:15 came-delayed until 3:38.  At this point we know we aren’t making our connection leaving O’Hare at 3:30.  We also know we have to make the next flight at 5:19 if we are going to make our connection from LAX to Sydney leaving at 9:15.  When the guy working the counter told us the delay was pushing to 4:26 and that would mean the earliest we would get to Chicago was 5:30…things were really not looking good!  Time to not judge in the middle and start praying!  We also decided we deserved a beer after being in the airport for 4 hours.

Prayers were answered when we were told we were boarding and taking off at 4:03!  We knew it would still be cutting it close but we now had a chance.  We also were only half done with our beer, but when the bartender said they technically don’t have to go cups but they do have fountain soda cups (wink wink) we had an illegal “to go beer” so we knew our luck was starting to swing! We landed at 4:50 and of course had to make it all the way across the airport to get to our gate for the connecting flight.  What else could we do other than Home Alone it to get there on time.  Sweaty and nervous, we arrived at the gate a little after 5…we made it!

Thinking we could finally relax a bit, we took our time boarding the next flight since we would be on it for 14 hours.  Turns out waiting was a bad idea as our tickets beeped as we tried to pass through the gate and the lady yelled to the counter…”We got our two not checked in!”  Confusion, rage, fright…pick one for our emotions.  Apparently when our flights were getting all switched around someone had removed us from checked in status on the LA to Sydney flight…just one last scare to our long day of delays.  Luckily some poor family had been delayed on another flight and were not going to make it so we were able to get those seats.  Who knew after all our problems that a delay in another city would save us. 

United Airlines  is kind of enough to show you how long you have left and the distance remaining on the flight so upon boarding it said 13 hours and 39 minutes to go and 7,500 miles yet to travel…intimidating!  Luckily we had good travel partners as the two people next to us were a young Australian couple that had recently gotten engaged.  They were lovely people (starting to speak like an Australian already) and gave us many good tips on things to see while in Melbourne.  We were helpful in other ways like by explaining to them that having something salty like sausage with something sweet like pancakes for breakfast is normal in our country…we represent the USA well! 

The majority of the 14 hours was spent watching seasons of Entourage on April’s computer, eating, trying to sleep, watching the in flight movies, and more eating.  Before we knew it the 13 h 39 m was down to 5 min and 11 miles to go…to be honest overall the flight was not nearly as bad as we were expecting.  We had finally made it to Sydney, Australia!

*We apologize for the length of the post but because we are using this as a journal as well we didn’t want to leave out some details. Our next post should be coming very soon and will be going through our very exciting and fun first day in Melbourne!