Delayed, Delayed, Delayed
Atlanta, Georgia, USA - Day 1
I kept telling Katie that I was excited for all the new experiences we were about to have on our trip. Well...we definitely had a new experience last night! To fully tell the tale, let's rewind back six months to when I originally booked our tickets in November. At that time we were scheduled to depart MCI at 6:30pm and have a healthy two hour layover in Atlanta. A couple months later we get a notification that the flight was rescheduled for 7pm, leaving an hour and a half. No problem! That's the backstory, now let's fast forward to yesterday after we have made it through security and sit down at our gate. It is about 6pm and we are expecting to board soon when I get this text:
"DL 1870/May 11 from MCI now departs at 7:43 pm. You can check flight status at delta.com."
I am thinking, "Well that sucks...that leaves us with about a 37 minute layover..." Holding on to a small sliver of hope, about 10 minutes later I get another text:
"DL 1870/May 11 from MCI now departs at 8:30 pm. You can check flight status at delta.com."
"Uhh..." followed by another text:
"DL 1870/May 11 from MCI now departs at 8:54 pm. You can check flight status at delta.com."
"Ruh roh." With a feeling that maybe a negative 10 minutes layover would perhaps be slightly troublesome, we grabbed a "Need Help?" (tl;dr WE DID) and gave the number a call. After discussing the situation a bit we were essentially offered two options:
Go home and reschedule the whole thing for the same time Saturday
Take our flight to Atlanta, stay the night, and then take the Saturday 11pm flight to Rio
Since we didn't want to have to arrange more rides to and from the airport, and to avoid a chance of Saturday's MCI > Atlanta flight getting delayed, we opted to fly and spend the night in Atlanta. Delta compensated us with some money, miles, food vouchers, and provided accommodation at a Double Tree for the trouble. We got to our hotel and fortunately were close to the front of the line, because most of the plane showed up unannounced to the hotel all at once (Click-bait headline: Hotel staff HATE this ONE thing). They were really nice about it, but MAN. The gentleman that was helping us was the most gentle typist I have ever witnessed. We are talking one finger at a time. PECK.....PECK....Slow and meticulous like a bomb disposal technician. That keyboard is going to last forever.
The following day we very slowly got ready and were back at the Atlanta airport by 1pm. With only 10 hours to kill before our flight, we frantically tried to get all our shopping in. As I am wrapping up this blog, we have just a couple hours before finally boarding our flight to Rio de Janeiro.
This whole thing is obviously not ideal, but with everything else going on right now this barely seems like a problem. Above all else, the aspect of our trips we love most is making each other laugh and spending time together. Which we can do in Rio...or in an airport, or in some random hotel in Atlanta!
