Gaither Trails: Hola!! - Part 1: The Journey!

We just returned Saturday night from a week of vacationing in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. It was a fabulous trip once we finally arrived. However, we had some adventures in traveling on the way there. Let's just put it this way: arrived at Austin Airport at 4:30am, flight delays already, stood in line for 2 hours to checkin & change our connection in Houston, realized Mikalah's passport still had maiden name but the guy let us through, sat and waited and waited and waited on plane, taxi-ing, back to gate, in airport and finally departed at 4:30pm -- that's right, 12 hours after we had arrived at the airport!

There was a horrible storm in Houston so that airport was closed & no flights to Houston were leaving Austin. After many calls to Continental & changes to our connections & making decisions about whether to get our bags off the plane & just drive to Houston, our flight finally departed. This was nowhere near the end of our journey though. We got to the gate in Houston where our connecting flight (after 3 changes) was departing from and it was delayed by 2 hours, but our original connecting flight was still at the gate and would depart in 30 minutes once the first officer arrived so we decided to change our tix back to that flight (after the guy had to call for approval on my passport -- ahhhh!). So we ran over to get on the plane & were so excited that we were actually going to make it to Zihua finally!

Then we sat an hour waiting on the first officer b/c after his plane landed, there was no gate for him to pull into due to all the backups at the airport b/c of the storm. By the time he got to our plane, they called him that his flight time for the day had expired!! Our flight was cancelled & the flight we changed from, btw, actually flew out at 7:30pm!! We could have been on it!!

They told us that customer service would help us with getting a new flight. Well...that customer service line was a mile long & we moved maybe 5 feet in 2 hours! Then this supervisor lady came out and told like 250 of us that they would be closing at 10:30pm and we would not make it through the line by then so basically to "bug off" & go find someone else to help us! She sent us to another line that was twice as long, at which time, we decided to find our own way.

In the middle of all of this, we made friends with a couple from Newfoundland, Canada in the 1st customer service line & they decided we looked like we knew what we were doing (to much of our explaining that we did not and had made bad decisions all day). So the four of us went searching for anyone that would help us at a ticket counter. And I might mention here that I had called Continental on the phone & spoke to a rep who told me flights to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo were booked solid until Tuesday! That wasn't going to work!

While Jarrod, Calvin and Judy stood waiting at one ticket counter, I, of course, decided to do some further searching around the airport for a "high up" person and finally found this wonderful gentleman in a red suit jacket at gate E4 who seemed to be waiting there just for me with no one even standing in line to talk to him! Thank you Lord for looking out for us!! He actually worked in the office, but had arrived to help out so I told him our sob story & about the customer service rep who was so rude. He kindly gave me some options, one of which was to get on a plane back to Austin which departed in about 45 minutes & start our trip over from there. The other option was to get on a stanby list for the next day. Since we had been making the wrong decision all day, I asked for his advice on this one and he felt good about our chances to get on standby the next day due to all the weather and other people missing connections, etc. He put in some code that moved us to the top 2 spots on a Stanby list that was 12 long and growing, he gave me 2 overnight kits and a number they use to give passengers their discounted rates at hotels & I ran through the airport back to where Jarrod and the others were with a big thumbs up!!

Jarrod & I took Calvin & Judy over to the guy that helped me and got them 3 & 4 on the standby list. We called the number to book hotel rooms for all of us, they sent the shuttle to pick us up, we got to take showers & get about 5 hours sleep (while many others slept in the airport).

We headed back to the airport at 6:30am Sunday morning to see if we were still at the top of the standby list and if we would get on the first of three flights that day. We sat with our new friends and waited with anticipation. They brought a printout of the standby list to the gate & to our surprise, we were still the top 4 on a list of now 60+!! They told us to be ready to make a decision of whether we would split up if we were in a party & Jarrod & I decided we would since chances were that both of us would end up getting on a flight that day. They called Gaither, & I was the first on the list so ran up and immediately said "We'll split up"! She replied, "Are you Gaither, party of 2?" I said, "oh, yes, are there 2 spots?" She said "Yes"! Music to my ears. I hollared for Jarrod and after another questioning of my passport (we held our breath each time), we boarded the plane and shortly after our 2 friends boarded as well! There were 4 spots just for us! What a blessing!! And what a sense of satisfaction & defeat! That we didn't give up & we were finally going to make it to Zihuatanejo! We were so pleased to have been able to help our friends & to form the friendship that we did with them. Had all of this chaos not happened or had our journey that day gone down a different path, we'd have never had the chance to know them & help them.

Waiting for the First Officer to arrive and thinking (key word) that we were finally going to depart for Zihua after our 15 hour journey at this point!