Day 1 of trip. This is the travel day.
4 people from the team flew out from XNA at 5:30am and had to change planes in DFW and then arrive in Houton before the rest of us were scheduled to leave XNA on a Continental flight direct to Houston. They felt that they had a raw deal on travel... until they learned about the plight of the rest of us.
10 of us were to fly out of XNA at 12:30pm. I got to the airport early and got all checked in so that I could greet the kids and parents arriving and help get everyone checked in. I was leisurely sitting there with my carry-ons, chatting with Bethany Peevy (whose family was flying to San Francisco for spring break) when the airline agent who checked me in found me and said that our flight had been cancelled. WHAT??? There was a winter storm coming later in the day and they were not sending the plane from Houston to pick up our flight.
Every flight on every airline was overbooked out of XNA and most other airports throughout the whole weekend for spring break. We checked on flying out of Little Rock, Tulsa, Kansas City, Springfield, Dallas, everywhere we could think of. Continental could fly us out mid-day on Monday. ugh!
Parents and kids were arriving. I was on the phone with 3 different people looking at alternatives. Chris and I were discussing options with airline agents. The decision was made to rent 2 vehicles and drive to Houston. Continental could book us on a flight to Managua out of Houston at 9am the next day. Chris got the vehicles rented while I got our boarding passes for the team and the agent went ahead and checked us in for the next day's flight.
While we packed the vehicles, Daniel and Joseph ran back to their house to pick up their GPS. It was raining and getting colder. After we had group prayer with the parents, we jumped in the cars and headed out for Houston at 12:30 - the same time our plane should have taken off.
We drove straight through to Houston with just a couple of stops for gas and bathrooms. We ate in the car once and stopped for about 15 minutes for dinner. We drove through rain, then snow (in Oklahoma!), then wind and then calm darkness. It was a loooooong drive, but worth it to get to our plane. The kids in my vehicle sang a lot and then napped a lot. I enjoyed having them in the car.
We got rooms in Houston and dropped the kids off. Then Chris and I drove to fill up the rentals with gas. I spilled some gas on my tennis shoes and had to put them outside our hotel door. I sprinkled mouthwash on them to help neutralize the odor. It just ended up smelling like minty fresh gas. I didn't much care about the tennis shoes, but I didn't want to get stopped at the airport for having fuel-laced shoes and make them wonder if I was trying to blow up the plane or something. I was thankful that I got to breeze through security. :)
I think we got to bed about 11:30 or so. The wind was blowing so hard outside that it made the windows howl. Catie turned on the vent fan so that the noise would cover up the wind. I think we slept pretty well.
We were thankful for the plans that God made available for us to make it Houston and still get to Nicaragua by the next day. We were also thankful that we left Rogers when we did. They ended up with a foot of snow over the weekend! The roads in Oklahoma were getting pretty nasty as we went through. I'm glad we made it in a timely manner.
All in all, it was a great start to our trip. God is so good.
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