I woke up with a start around 3:00am, perhaps excited about the day ahead. Alex was leaving PA to fly to Salt Lake City, UT (where I would pick him up, a 3 hr drive from Twin Falls). From there, we would drive 4 hours to Island Park, ID, a town close to Yellowstone National Park. When I texted Alex, he hadn't left home yet and so I kept him company for the next few hours as I waited for tiredness to set in again. After he had arrived at the airport and was on board his flight, we said our goodbyes and I settled into bed again, it was still pitch black outside.
2 hours later, I woke up from my second sleep, ready to start the busy day for real. Then I saw texts from Alex. He was still in PA due to some engine issues. Um, come again? He was supposed to have been in the air 2 hours ago and he was still in PA?! How was this going to work? His 2.5 hour layover just turned into "you could maybe make it before doors close". Just as I was comprehending the gravity of this situation, he tells me he is boarding again and quickly he is off, leaving me with anxiety through the roof.
I spent the next few hours frantically thinking through the situation. On my last trip home, about a week ago, to visit Alex and Piper, I had flown through Las Vegas which is where Alex's layover was. I had a long enough layover that I decided to walk every inch of the airport, all 3 terminals. Luckily, the airport was still fresh in my mind. It is a very poorly designed airport and it is NOT a good one to be at if you have a short layover with flights in different terminals. When I researched where he was going to be flying into and where he was going to need to be to catch his next flight, I knew there was a very serious chance he was not going to make it.
I looked up other flights he could catch from Vegas, but there was only one that wouldn't make our day too much longer (we already weren't going to get to our hotel until 8:00pm). There was a flight 30 minutes later from Vegas to Boise, but Boise was west of where I was and SLC was southeast. This meant, if I started driving to SLC so I could be there when he arrived, I may have to then turn around and drive back the direction I came to then continue on to Boise. The gate was also close to where he was flying in and not where his (probably) missed connection was so he would have to then run back to where he originally started. I was left feeling completely hopeless and powerless, unsure what to do.
I sent Alex very thorough directions on what to do and how to get from his gate to his second flight. I knew he would turn his phone off airplane mode once he landed and read everything I sent. I also told him to book it, though probably not in such a polite way. Luckily, my panicked texts that he received clearly communicated to him that he better start praying and start running. He ended up making it to the gate 2 minutes before the doors closed. Though we are so glad he made it, we both probably have more gray hairs because of it.
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