Twelve hours of airports

Let me start by saying that I love to fly. I think it's awesome that you get thousands of miles away in a few hours. I love to see the view from the air.
That being said..what I don't like ...is airports and delays. That's what we dealt with yesterday. When you have bad weather in one part of the country it has a ripple effect.
We got to Burlington around 11:00 am so my sister could make her meeting at work. No biggie...I'm a people watcher anyway.
About 1:15 I started getting a little nervous when they hadn't boarded us. Then came the announcement you hate...we have a delay into Philadelphia. We would miss our connection so they re booked our connection from Philadelphia to Dayton so we would get in at 10 instead of 6:30. Well, that wasn't the best news but it didn't ruffle me too much. THEN they delay until 4:30 and about 4:20 they call us up and let us know that they have canceled our flight from Philly to Dayton and they need to book us to Washington DC at 5 and then from Washington to Dayton at 7:20 so we would get there at 8:50 pm ..which was even better..EXCEPT we would only have 10 minutes before they started boarding..so if the flight was late ..we were in trouble.
When the flight didn't take off until 5:40 I knew we were in trouble. We got to Washington DC at 7:00...ran to the shuttle and missed our flight by probably 15 minutes...AHHHHH!!!
It was chaos as well because they had were delaying flights out of Washington and tons of people were missing connections. There was another lady in line that was going to Dayton and her son was on the phone trying to find out the other possibilities but there were no more flights going to Dayton and the hotels around the airport were booked. I pretty much resigned myself that we would be sleeping in Reagan International Airport ..until the ticket attendant said one of the options was a flight leaving at 9:15 and getting into Columbus at 10:30. Yes!!!! So after a long day of delays I finally got to Columbus at 10:30 where my WONDERFUL husband drove an hour and a half to pick us up and even stopped for us to get something to eat...definitely my knight in shining armor.

There are always lessons to be learned in these kinds of situations:

1. Nothing is ever in our control...and it's better to just go with the flow and make the best of what you have..things do get better
2. Pack my contact case and glasses in my carry on...I'm totally blind without contacts and they get pretty dry after 12 hours
3. When at all possible...take direct flights with no connections!
4. Pack my computer power cord!! I did have about 2 hours of computer time and it definitely helps to have an online connection
5. Cell phones are invaluable in airports
6. If you're nice to the ticket counter agents...they are nice to you.

So it was an adventure. I definitely saw some very interesting people from all walks of life. I did get to see the Washington Monument,Jefferson Memorial, and the Capitol building. I will fly again..actually I'm flying to Washington DC in August with my friend Mary for a diabetes conference..but it's a direct flight!!!