Joshua's Travel Woes

If anybody out there remembers... Joshua has been gone since the beginning of December interviewing for residency positions on the East Coast. His last interview was on Friday at Maine Medical Center. Here is a re-cap of his weekend.

Friday
1:00 pm: interview at Maine Medical Center finished. Get in rental car and drive to Boston to catch 6pm non-stop flight to Seattle.

2:30: arrive in Boston, minutes after large snow storm hits the area. Travel out of Boston-Logan airport is impacted. Airport leaves one runway open for arrivals and departures.

6:00: Jet Blue flight to Seattle is delayed till 7pm.

7:00: Flight to Seattle delayed again till 9pm

9:30: Passengers are told they can board the plane. They all get on.

10:30: Flight starts to taxi to runway. Airport shuts down all runways for quick snow removal.

11:10: Airline opens runway.

11:15: Jet Blue flight crew has now worked past their mandated time and flight returns to the terminal and flight is now cancelled.

12:00: Since Jet Blue only flies once a day to Seattle, the flights fill up fast. Naomi finds a United flight on Sunday at 11am. Josh cancels Jet Blue flight and gets a hotel in Boston for two nights.

Saturday
1:00 am: Josh arrives at hotel.

Josh kills time in Boston and changes flight out of Boston to 9am.

Sunday

7:30: Josh arrives at airport.

8:30 Passengers begin boarding plane.

9:00: Plane is now broken and maintenance is called.

10:00: United flight finally leaves.

12:25: Josh's connecting flight in Washington DC departs.

12:30: United flight arrives at Washington DC.

12:45-5:00: Josh stands in line with a million other people trying to get to the West Coast. Josh calls Naomi a zillion times with various crazy ideas how to get home. The best one? Rent a car and drive to Seattle. From DC.

5:00: Josh finally gets confirmed on a flight at 10:30pm to San Francisco, but is told to wait on standby for the last flight of the day to Seattle.

5:15-8:00: Josh waits on standby for the flight. At one point they begin boarding and he is only the 20th person on the standby list, then the plane breaks and the flight is eventually cancelled.

8:15: Josh goes to the San Francisco departure gate and waits.

11:00: Josh boards the plane, and, since he has not called me in the past five minutes, I am assuming it has left the airport.

Josh is supposed to arrive at San Francisco around 2am on Monday the 22nd (Claire's second birthday.) Flights to Seattle start to depart at 6:30, and that is when he can start to standby for those flights. Hopefully he will get home in time for birthday cake and for his interview at Virgina Mason on Tuesday!

What a trooper! The only time he totally lost it was after he missed his connection in DC. He swore to me that all East Coast schools were getting ranked last. Apparently we can never visit Boston or DC again. He even wanted me to buy him a ticket to Seattle for $2000! That is when I called in the reinforcements: sister Lora and brother Christian. They obviously had more success than I, his attitude has been stellar since then!

As for the kids and I, this could not have happened at a better time. Seattle got 5 inches of snow last night and we are expecting another 3-8 inches tonight. We have been sledding and snowshoeing all day! I even got a cross-country ski in early this morning! And on that note, now that my kids are in bed and asleep, I am going skiing again. I may never have this opportunity again to ski out my front door in Seattle! Love it!