Wild & Crazy Adventures with Jim and Aleycia

The first day of Vacation! Yay! (Forgive me for posting these late, I'm just not on the ball, so we travel back in time!). We woke up at 6:30am today. Our flight didn't leave till 11am, but we had a few last minute errands to do (like get money..."hondos"). R, N, & B picked us up for a little morning Coffeebreak and Bread Poets, then dropped us off at the Airport. Nothing like a nice morning before a nice flight overseas...or so we thought! Our flight plan was to travel from Bismarck to Minneapolis to New York and overseas to Frankfurt, Germany.This is us at the airport, before the "events" begin. While waiting to board, we said a prayer for our trip. I kid you not, as Jim was saying "Amen," we hear an announcement overhead "Flight blah blah blah to Minneapolis/St. Paul will be delayed until further notice." Since when is anyone ever delayed in the 2-terminal Bismarck airport? So we wait...and wait...and finally an hour later the plane leaves (mind you, we had a 1/2 hour connection to make in Minneapolis... but we had a back-up plan). Apparently the x-ray machine broke down at the baggage check. Oh, see our backpacks? That's all we brought with us, and they counted as carry-ons.
Well, we made it to MSP, but missed our connection. Remember I said we had a back-up plan? There was another flight scheduled to leave a couple hours later. So, we went and checked the monitors to see which gate that flight was leaving from...and we see "Flight Canceled." (Remember the thousands of flights that were canceled in July/August due to the pilot shortage?). We Started to sweat a little, since the next flight to JFK is at 6pm which would put us in New York after our connection to Frankfurt! So, Jim ends up talking to some of the counter attendants, who weren't very helpful. I'm on the phone with mom trying to figure out what we could do. Mom is on the phone with aunt S who is also searching like mad to figure out how to get us to NY. Meanwhile, Jim heads over to the American Airlines attendant and asks if there is room to get us on their flight to Newark. We end up being on standby. Then get the flight. Arrived in Newark, and looked for a shuttle, which of course wouldn't get us to JFK in time...so go to the taxi stand and ask the taxi if he can drive fast. He says yes!

We hop into the cab and red flags start popping up. The taxi driver is from Africa and is watching some movie from his home country which looks really weird. Kinda freaks me out a little. We start heading down the street and he says that he needs to stop and get some gas. Ugh...we are like in a hurry! Well, $100 later, the driver gets us to the airport just in the nick of time for us to clear our international travel and hop on the plane. We were so relieved to sit in our seats!!

We flew Singapore Airlines and had royal treatment!! The airplane wasn't crowded. Everyone had their own TV screen with about 100 movies to pick from and TV shows and nintendo games, and you could even learn a language! The stewardess' worked hard- we had 2 meals, and they continually were walking by with wine, beer, OJ, and hot towels for our faces! This was so fun, I had a sleeping pill to take, but debated whether or not I was going to take it, because I didn't want to miss out on all the fun! Well, I took it anyway...lights out...next stop Frankfurt, Germany!!