Tuesday, February 23, 2010

A Scary Thing Happened on the Way Home

Our little family just returned two days ago from our annual vacation to Mexico. The timing couldn't have been better, as we have been pounded with bitter cold temperatures and massive amounts of snow since December 2009. It's been snowng and cold since LAST FREAKIN' YEAR!!! Can you believe it? It sounds even worse when you put it like that.

Later this week I will entertain you with hilarious stories from a trip I have named "The Clampetts go to Tullum", but for today I am going to take a lesson from Quentin Tarantino and start from the end of the story. The airplane ride home.

It started out as a normal everyday flight back to the U.S. We arrived at the Cancun airport a few hours before our flight was due to take off. Check in was the usual nightmare, with multiple forms to fill out regarding our legal status and intentions to not try to smuggle fruit out of the country. The usual. We proceeded to the security check in point and passed our carry on luggage through the evil x ray machine. Everything seemed fine until my carry on bag was stopped through the machine. I looked over the conveyor belt to see a little Mexican man frowning at the computer screen in front of him with very furrowed brows. A quick look down the belt showed that it was my bag he was frowning at. Now, at that point I honestly couldn't tell you what was packed in that bag. I knew I had nothing dangerous, I mean come on, I am a harmless 37 year old housewife, but I also didn't know if there was shampoo or something in there either. Another security officer picked up my bag, placed it in front of me, and proceeded to go through it. Would you like to know the dangerous weapon they found? It was my son's toy airplane. Apparently you cannot take an airplane on an airplane. We all got a good laugh over it, and we were able to proceed to our gate. After a quick lunch we boarded our plane and figured we were finished with vacation drama. Boy were we wrong!

I guess we were probably over Virgina when it happened. At this point it was about 6:30 pm and we had been on the plane for about 3 and 1/2 hours. We figured we would be landing soon, so we were a little shocked when the plane made a sudden turn. And another turn. And yet another turn. It didn't take long to figure out that we had just flown in a circle. That was a little alarming, to say the least. The next thing we knew, the captain came on the speaker to tell us that BWI Airport was currently closed because an unidentified person had run onto a runway. My sister-in-law's jaw dropped. Heck, my jaw dropped about 3 feet. As did my stomach. Then the captain explained that we only had about 20 minutes of fuel left and we may have to divert to Richmond International. RICHMOND??? VIRGINIA??? What the heck am I going to do in RICHMOND??? I, of course, being prone to sudden bouts of drama, was getting visions of terrorist plots and planes crash landing, and the pilot episode of Lost. My sister-in-law, Nichole, and I grabbed each other's arms and just sat there in shock trying to stay calm for the children. I was ready to cry, but I couldn't because my daughter was sitting right next to me, obliviously playing her DS. After 5 of the longest minutes of my life, the captain came back on the tell us it was a false alarm and we would be landing shortly. The entire airplane cheered and we fastened out seat belts for landing.

So that was it, we are officially back safe from Mexico. Part one of the story will be coming soon once I fully recover from leaving paradise to almost crash land in the freakin' snow. (yeah, I told you I was dramatic) Stay tuned.

1 comment:

  1. I laughed my butt off the entire time I read this. I can just picture you having a Kate(Jon and Kate) meltdown on the plane. In case you didn't see that show she had a pretty similiar experience while flying. She however did cry. LoL I cannot wait for the next part of this. I haven't laughed like this in a long long time.

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