Instead of Anger and Heartache… a Teaching Moment

When life gives you travel 🍋’s…make an adventure out of it!! The first day of our spring break yesterday started out with our first flight of three being cancelled and the prospect of not even leaving until Monday at the earliest as there were simply no seat to be had out of Raleigh.

Delta customer service found us a routing on United out of Greensboro and the amazing family Sherpa Glenn Bell drove us to Greensboro. When we arrived, the United routing didn’t work out and there were no seats on Delta. Prospects looked bleak for making it anywhere so we had a quick family meeting and decided to stay in Greensboro without transportation in hopes of getting to Atlanta where we maybe could get a flight to the West Coast and be a bit closer. (I did share my option that I didn’t think we had much of a chance but what the heck, we’d have fun in Greensboro).

We made the second Standby by the thinnest of margins and got to Atlanta. Again the great folks at Delta were awesome in the face of the daunting task of reroute he passengers from 3000+ cancelled flight due to tornados a few days earlier in the Atlanta area. We used the time to read (we found a couple books that had been left by folks so it seemed like a sign), did a little writing and what what, we talked to each other!

April at the Delta Crown Club literally worked for two hours trying to find us three seats to Los Angeles with no avail. Finally, an 11p flight to Salt Lake was available and we made the decision to take it, at least we were headed in the right direction!

This routing still required three additional flights over the airport st two days – Los Angeles, San Francisco and Kona. A fantastic online customer service gentleman Dennis find some flights on Alaska Airlines growing through Portland to Kona on successive days. We finally made it to Salt Lake City at around 2:45a and as we had tons of time on the ground in between, our bags had actually come on an earlier flight.

I was so proud of our tired but not beaten family. Mary Catherine, our eleven year old daughter said, hey, at least I get to mark off another state I haven’t visited ! It was a good teachable moment… you can let situations bring you down and get angry, or you can make the best of the situation and push on through. We certainly aren’t there yet, and who knows what today will bring but I’m happy we’re on the path together!