Home at Last

It took a few extra hours, but we made it home. Our flight from Auckland to Los Angeles was about 12 hours, and although I really tried (really!) I couldn't sleep well. Too fidgety and tightly packed (not to mention tired) to really relax. They feed you well on those Qantas flights, but not always when you'd expect to be fed, and just when you're getting sleepy and think you could really sleep, there's someone asking you if you want something to drink.

We landed in LA at 6:30 a.m. Monday, local time, but it felt like about 5 p.m. (Tuesday) to us. We had to collect all out things and transfer to the domestic connections terminal and customs, etc, so we got through all that, and discovered Perry was missing. Somehow, he went through the line faster than Katie and I did, so we walked to the top of the ramp and he was no where in sight. We walked a little further, because we were convinced he had been ahead of us, and about 45 minutes later we found him back in the terminal waiting near a bookstore (but not actively looking for us!) I had walked past where he said he was standing at least three times and never saw him!

So, anyway we got to our American Airlines flight to Chicago with no further ado, and took off pretty much on time (10:30 a.m. LA time)

The trouble came when we landed in Chicago (4:30 local time) and saw they were predicting snow! Almost all the evening flights were being cancelled, but our was just delayed since the inbound flight hadn't landed yet. It got diverted from Iowa to Detroit until they had clearance to fly to Chicago. So, when they finally arrived at 12:15 a.m. we were assured they would clear the jet and board us as fast as they could. By that time the snow (less than 4 inches) had stopped and they had plowed and the planes needed to be de-iced, but we were in the air in less than an hour. So, we landed in Harrisburg at 3:15 a.m. (on Tuesday morning) instead of the planned 10:00 p.m.! And we were all very tired. It had taken more than 34 hours in real time to make the journey home, and none of us had really slept well that whole time. Thanks to our tired families who came to pick us up at that ungodly hour before going off to work the next day!