Late on August 1 Chad was settled in the hotel in Lubbock anxiously awaiting his early morning flight to come see me. We were chatting, he upgraded his seats so that he would have more leg room then he got an alert. His flight was canceled. WHAT!? Are you kidding me? The notice tells him to call their 1-800 number and talk to an associate. He called and was on hold for over 2 hours with no answer. American Airlines rebooked his flight for Tuesday evening and then he wouldn’t even get to Kentucky until Wednesday afternoon. I couldn’t believe this was happening. He only had 7 days off to be on the farm and I miss him so much! I am frantically trying to find other flights so he could still come first thing in the morning. I checked flights into Cincinnati, and into Louisville. All the flights going into Dallas were cancelled. I was so upset but tried to keep it together. Chad was going to try to go first thing in the morning to figure it out with the airlines since they are not answering the phone. I am sure neither of us slept very well that night.
Early, early in the morning Chad went to the Airport and spoke to the service counter. They explained the issue was bad weather in Dallas and that there were no flights being allowed to land there. I guess it was waaaayyyyyyy up in the sky because there wasn’t a drop of rain on the ground. But Chad was able to still get a flight out of Dallas that left at 4:30 pm. Mind you, he is 5 ½ hours away from Dallas still in Lubbock. He had one vehicle there so when he flew back home, he would have a vehicle. So now what? How do you get to Dallas and leave a vehicle at the airport? Try a rental? Sure, they open up at 7 am according to the service counter, Chad sat for a couple hours waiting for 7 am to rent a car. At 7 am the car rental ladies start showing up, Chad walks over and they ask if they can help him. He said, yes, I need to rent a vehicle. She says oh sorry we don’t open until 8 we are just here doing paperwork. He goes and sits back down. At 8 am he goes back up to the counter and she once again asks, how can I help you. He said Well I still need to rent a car from here to Dallas airport. She said oh we don’t have any one-way rentals. And proceeded to tell him he should have booked in advance to ensure they had a car available.
Now, Chad is usually the calm one when it comes to things like this (probably because he doesn’t usually deal with them) but this is when he blew a gasket. He proceeded to tell her “Now why would I rent a vehicle when I was supposed to fly out 3 hours ago? Would you have rented a vehicle ahead of time?” Then he went down to the next agency to see if they had vehicles. Apparently, the guy heard the first conversation and explained they also did not have one-ways. The only other option was a company in town but they did not open until 9:30 am. What a waist of a morning. Chad at this point was very frustrated and decided he might need to go get some breakfast and calm down before his next stop.
I had gotten a notification about his new flight so when I woke up, I was excited to know he would still be coming today. I didn’t know all the Hell he had been through already this morning. When I called him, he was on his way to the rental company in town to try his luck there and he would call me back. When he got there, Chad being nice asked how his day was going and the guy began to explain he was having a bad morning. Chad could relate and told him he needed a vehicle to go from Lubbock to Dallas. The guy explained the only one he had was still dirty. Chad explained he has a flight to catch and doesn’t care that it is dirty. Chad got it rented and asked about a shuttle. The guy said they do not have shuttles to the airport and he would have to get a uber. Super frustrating but at least he was able to get a car.
Finally on the road to Dallas, and made it with 1 hour to drop off the rental car and get through TSA. Talk about stressful! He gets in line at TSA and of course things are slow as can be and he is worried he is going to miss his flight. When it is almost his turn, he finds out that he could have taken the shorter line since he upgraded his seats. Oh well now! Chad races to get to his gate just to find out that his flight was delayed for 45 min. but the flight didn’t even start loading for over an hour.
I was already in Lexington doing some last-minute shopping at Costco anxiously Waiting for Chad and his flight had not even left yet. I’m sure he was overly tired and ready for this day to be over with. Finally, they were boarding and they were headed to Lexington. I finished up shopping, got some gas, and headed to the airport. I wasn’t sure how traffic was going to be and I did not want to delay seeing Chad for another second. I parked and waited for a little over an hour and got a notification that the flight was delayed another 30 minutes. Sigh~! Apparently, it was not a good flying day!
Chad was finally there! I was so excited! I pulled up at the front of the airport and picked him up. WE headed to dinner and enjoyed our little date and then headed to the farm. Chad had not been to the farm prior to this. He had only seen pictures and facetime when we viewed the property. When he got there, he looked all over the barn, and the house by flashlight. It was adorable but I couldn’t blame him one bit. I would have been doing the same.
Pink Squirrel Farmstead 