Travel Woes

For those of you who don't know, my hubby, Daniel, has been working in Bloomington Illinois since the beginning of December. He travels back and forth each week so we can be together as a family on weekends. This is not an easy row to hoe under the best of conditions and during the winter, the weather conditions are not the best. I think he has only had maybe a half dozen flights since December that went smoothly. When you figure he is on a plane two times a week and has done that for about 10 weeks now, that's 20 flights. Anyway, his adventures would put Steve Martin and John Candy (Planes, Trains and Automobiles) to shame...well, almost;)

Last Thursday, he went to the Bloomington airport at approximately 11:00, only to find the flight out of Bloomington was delayed by 4 hours due to weather in Bloomington. He was only a couple of hours by car from Chicago and Chicago was where he was supposed to be flying to. So, he and three other guys went in together and rented a car to go to Chicago. Daniel missed his flight by 10 minutes. Weather got worse and he ended up spending the night in Chicago. Friday morning he got on a flight to fly into Roanoke (about an hour from our house). The weather here was bad and icy and low clouds on Friday and he ended up getting rerouted to Charleston, WV for a few hours until the clouds lifted high enough for the planes to land. The drive home would have taken 11 hours. The flight home took about 36 from the time he started out in Bloomington to the time he walked in our front door.

Then yesterday evening we dropped him off at the Lynchburg airport (about 1/2 hour away - he flies from different airports depending on his schedule). We dropped him off around 3 and his flight left around 4:30. He flew to Atlanta, only to discover his flight leaving there was delayed due to dense fog in Illinois. It was eventually cancelled and he spent last night in Atlanta. His flight into Bloomington couldn't be rescheduled until today at 4 pm. This afternoon and tonight, there is going to be an ice storm in Bloomington. Every day he misses from work is no pay, plus it doesn't make the employer very happy when he isn't there either, plus there is the added expense of unexpected hotel stays. So, instead of waiting for the 4 pm flight, he is going to try and see if he can get an earlier flight into Chicago and then drive from Chicago to Bloomington...what a mess! Be sure to stay tuned for more traveling adventures!