Traveling to St. Louis - Take 2

This weekend, Lily flew to St. Louis for the second time in her young life in order to see her Aunt Angela graduate from college. This time Carl could not go with us because he had some important things going on at work, so Lily and I took to the friendly skies on our own. Having learned some important lessons from our first flight with Lily, we made some adjustments this time around. We actually woke up at 3 am so as to ensure that we made it to the airport well before our 6:55 am flight. When we got there, Carl dropped us off curbside and then went to park the car. Most importantly, we checked our bag OUTSIDE. I will never again go through the extreme inconvenience of standing in insanely long lines and dealing with rude and incompetent airline personnel in the inside check-in. The porter outside ran down the sidewalk to help me with my bag while I was carrying Lily, and he had me on my way within 60 seconds - no lie. It was the best $5 I think I ever spent. We were through security and waiting at our gate with an hour to spare before boarding time, so I'm feeling very confident at this point.

However, when we boarded the plane, we were only on about 15 minutes before the pilot informed us that there is a mechanical problem with the plane and we would have to deboard. So, off we go. I gather up all of our things, walk down the rickety stairs of the plane, go outside on the tarmac to the building, drudge up the stairs and back into the terminal. As I'm patiently waiting to hear what's next, I hear "Ms. Deetz" and see one of the agents looking right at me. I was very perplexed as to how this woman knew who I was and why she was calling my name. So, I go over to her, and she asks me if I would like to get on the flight to Chicago that was leaving immediately and then connect to St. Louis from Chicago. Fabulous - yes, please. The woman saw that I was traveling with a baby and since I was the only one on the flight with a baby, she knew that I must be Ms. Deetz. She said that she knew how hard it is travel with little ones, so she was trying to help. There are definitely some advantages to traveling with little bits in tow.

So, now we are off to Chicago, and I'm very happy that we are only going to be about 3 hours behind schedule, compared to our last flight to St. Louis in which we arrived about 14 hours behind schedule. When we arrived in Chicago, I suddenly realized that in the time that I got off the original flight and the time that the new flight took off for Chicago (about 15 minutes total), there was no possible way that my luggage was traveling with me. I tried to ask an agent in Chicago if he could check to see where my bag was, but he was entirely unhelpful and said that he had no way of knowing. Thank you very much.

So, of course, I get to St. Louis and the baggage carousel holds no parcel for me. Unfortunately, St. Louis was not my final destination for this trip. Angela's graduation was three hours away in Springfield, MO. So, I give my information to the claims guy, and he assures me that I will receive my bag in Springfield by that night or early the next morning at the latest. Yeah, right.

The graduation was at 2:00 pm on Sunday and needless to say, my bag was still not there. So, my more aggressive counterpart, Carl, called the airline and reamed them out until I got a $100 allowance to buy new clothes and essentials for the event. He has definitely showed me that sometimes it pays to be the squeaky wheel. All said and done, I received my bag late Sunday night and had some spiffy new clothes as compensation for my inconvenience. Not too bad.

The trip itself was wonderful. Lily got to meet her Uncle Tim and cousin Mary for the very first time. She also got to see everyone else - all her aunts, uncles, cousins, Grandma and Grandpa on the Meyer side. I really couldn't have asked for a better way to spend my first Mother's Day.

I want to send out a big "Congrats" to Angela, Zach, and Ashley on their graduation. We are very proud of them all, with their Magnas and Summas and so on. I'm very excited that Angela is going to grad school at Wash U in St. Louis. Hopefully, we will be joining her back in St. Louis in just two short years.

I don't know if I ever publicly acknowledged Carl's recent achievement of having two scientific papers accepted for publication. Since this is turning out to be a very long post, I might as well do that too. Lily and I are so proud of him and all the hard work that he has been doing lately.

I've posted some pictures of our trip, but of course, I left my camera in the hotel for the main event of the weekend. So I don't have any pictures of the graduate or my brother and his family who also went to Springfield for the day. Hopefully, I'll get some pictures from Ang soon that I can post.