Tuesday 1 April 2008

Finally!

I made it! Whooohooo! I'm at my parents house. They live in Knoxville, Tn. What a trip. I don't know about around the world in 80 days, but I do know about 1/2 around the world in 1 day!! LOL


Amazingly enough my flight out of the UK didn't leave until 2:30 in the afternoon. Usually it leaves early in the morning and you have to get up in the middle of the night to get there on time. It helped that they had some new flights out of Heathrow instead of Gatwick. It takes anywhere from 3-4 hours to get to Gatwick, but it only takes about 2 to get to Heathrow. Thank the Lord. The only thing about a later flight on the UK side is that you get in later on the US side.

I had to fly into Minneapollis. That was a first, but thankfully the airport is small. I only had about an hour and a half to go through customs, get my luggage, re-check my bags, go through security (yet again) and get to my departure gate. My plane had to hold over Minn. for about an extra 20 minutes, taking my transfer time down quite a bit.

Once we landed and I got my luggage sorted and got to my gate it was about 6:20. The flight was suppose to start boarding at 6:25 and leave at 6:55. The reason we had to hold in the air was because Minn. decided to get it's winter and it was snowing. Joy!!!

We boarded the plane on time, but we had to wait on another flight that had about 47 passengers that were suppose to be on our plane to be able to land. They had circled for about an hour and by the time they got to us we had been sitting in the plane for about an hour. Well, by the time they got their luggage loaded and etc., it was snowing pretty hard and their was about an in or 2 on the ground.

As they shut the plane door and tried to lock the metal bar that is on the outside it broke, so then they had to call the mechanic to fix it. Wonderful!!! The snow is still falling mind you! They get that fixed but then have to de-ice the plane. All the time snow is falling. I can see the plows on the runway while I'm waiting to go. All in all, we sat in the plane for about 2 1/2 hours. I was suppose to arrive in Atlanta at 10:30 p.m. but didn't get their until about 12:15 a.m. and we still had to drive to Knoxville.

Talk about tired! Mercy! We got to my parents' house around 4:30 a.m. and finally in bed about 5. I was up for around 29 hours except for what I snoozed on the plane. Let's just say I'm glad to be on solid ground and able to stretch out.

Now. . . . . it's off to Wal-mart! YYYYYEEEEEAAAAAAHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blessings,
Sis. Tammy