Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

After a short night of air-conditioned sleep, we awoke at 3:00AM to begin our vacation travels to the midwest.  After showering, loading the car, and competing final preparations, we woke the girls at 4:00AM and put them in the van.  Joe then drove us to the metro station (one different from where someone is trying to steal his scooter), dropped us off with all of our luggage (pictured above, significantly less than last time!), and drove home to get his scooter to drive back to the metro station so he would have some wheels to ride home (provided no one stole them) when he got off work that evening.

Our goal was to catch the first train to come through the metro station, just after 5:00AM.  Once Joe arrived back on his scooter, we had a few minutes to spare.

We made a transfer to another train line and got to the airport with a little buffer time.  It's funny how you can eat up all your buffer time by taking one wrong turn out of the metro toward the wrong airline terminal.  It takes awhile to get to the terminal, walk the entire terminal, realize the airline you're looking for is not in the terminal, ask someone where the airline is located, discover that you need to take a bus or walk 15 minutes to the correct terminal, haul your small children and pile of luggage outside to the curb, miss the first two buses because you're standing in the wrong place, go to the correct place, load on a bus and ride to the correct terminal.  Once you've done all of that, you'll realize that you're actually now in danger of missing your flight (or at least your bags are).  Thankfully, things seemed to be turning around when we got to the airline counter.  They checked us in, gave Joe a gate pass (he wasn't flying with us, just getting us to the gate) and turned us loose on security with minimal effort.  We were now closer to back on schedule with a good 40 minutes before our flight took off and 30 minutes before they closed boarding. 

Unfortunately, security was not as kind to us as the airline counter.  We were the fifth people in line and would you believe that it took us 35 minutes to get through security?  I know you would believe it because this is The Doolittle Gambit you're reading.  My mantra became, "We're never gonna make it."  Joe tired of this after the 20th repetition and kindly asked me not to talk if that was all I could think of the say.  After getting through security (I caused a small slow down because I left my phone in my pocket and had to go through the scanner twice), we hustled to the girls to the gate knowing there was no way we were getting on that plane. 

Fortunately, for us the man directly behind us in security was also on our flight.  He blazed past us running toward the gate and when we got there he was already begging them to open the jetway doors back up and let him on the plane.  My travels have taught me that once the jetway door is closed, there's no way you're getting on the plane.  He, however, seemed to possess some magical power and convinced the manager on duty to open the door and let us on the plane.  I have never seen airline personnel work so quickly in my whole life.  Within two minutes of the decision to let us on the plane, we were down the jetway and entering the plane.  This meant issuing us new tickets, tagging and taking our stroller and hustling this slow moving train down the jetway.  I still don't know how they did it, but I do know I almost made it on the plane without my cell phone.  Joe got us to the gate and just as they were closing the jetway door I remembered I'd passed him my cell phone in security and had never gotten it back from him.  "Where's my phone?"  I yelled in a panic.  Then the panic moved to his face as he tried quickly to remember what he had done with it in all the confusion.  He checked one pocket, then the other, pulled out his phone and in the last seconds pulled out my phone, handed it to me and the jetway door closed in the next moments.  It was very dramatic.  In fact, we went from being sure we'd missed the flight to getting on the flight so quickly that we didn't even have time for proper goodbyes.  This caused the pregnant lady to tear up in the middle of the chaos.  Perfect timing, right?

Life with the Pulls is not always a disaster.  Sometimes we actually get on the plane and when we do we realize that we have an entire row, both sides of the aisle, all to ourselves.  This makes for a happy pregnant mom who was intending to lap hold her 17 month old for the entire flight.  The girls did well on the first flight and we had plenty of time for play in the Milwaukee airport, too.  If you're ever travelling with small children on an airplane, may I highly recommend the Milwaukee airport as a great place to land with children.

We camped in the toddler play area for about 45 minutes before boarding our next flight and it was a happy, happy time for all!  Well, except at the end when Liyah fell off the elevated path pictured above, but other than that, very happy.

The kind, kind, sanity-saving flight attendant on our next flight asked the person next to us to move before we even got to our seats.  As a consequence, we again had an entire row all to ourselves.  Aliyah slept in the seat next to me (a miracle, no?) and the older girls sat happily across the aisle munching pretzels and drinking airline water. 

Friends met us in Omaha, NE and escorted us in their van to Grandma DeShon's house.  We were exhausted, but happy to be done travelling.  At 2PM eastern time, we'd been on the go for 10 hours.  While it was a long morning, not one I'm interested in repeating anytime in the near future, the girls were well behaved, fun to be with, and after getting on our first flight, things went smoothly.  Not bad for the crew that usually good for an entire morning of disasters!