What Else Could Go Wrong, Part 2

Part two of the story starts with our flight from Vegas to Long Beach, California. We have a flight out of Vegas on Jetblue that leaves at 7:00am and arrives in Long Beach at 8:10am. We get to bed late at about 1:30am, but we get up at 4:30am anyway with no problems. We leave at 5:00am and head to the car rental place to return our car. We get there, and we are in and out and then we head on the shuttle to the airport. Once we arrive at the airport, we go straight to the Jetblue counter to check in and theres hardly anyone in line. The man weighs our 2 suitcases and one is over by 8 lbs. Rather than pay the extra $20 fee for overweight baggage, we decide to rearrange some things. However, once we try to close the bigger of the 2 suitcases, the zipper breaks. We try frantically to fix it to no avail. Ray runs upstairs to see if the stores have any type of suitcase or bags that we can use. He comes back empty handed because the bags were small and he wasn't sure if they would work. I try to go look at them myself, however in my stressed out mode I failed to hear where Ray told me to go look and I came back telling him I didn't see it but since we had no other choice just to go get three (since we could check 4 items between the 2 of us). He comes back and we throw all the things in the three bags, check them, and run upstairs to the security check because it is now 6:20am and our flight leaves in 40 mins. Once you go through the security check at the Las Vegas airport, you must then board a tram/train like thing to get to the gate. The woman at the Jetblue counter told us to hurry because the line was getting a little long. Well, little honestly does not describe this line in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the line was the biggest line I think I have seen anywhere in the entire world, EVER. Despite getting ahead in the line a little due to the fact our flight was leaving soon, we spend the entire 40 minutes in the line. We get to the gate, finally, only to see that our plane is still there, yet the doors have already been closed and there is no way that we can get in. In fact, they even held up closing the boarding from 10 minutes until departure to 4 minutes until departure to try to wait for us and another couple who arrived late. Needless to say, we needed to wait until the next flight, which was 2pm, a whole 7 hours later, and on top of that, the flight was full and we would have to fly standby which means we weren't guaranteed a seat and that was the only other flight (I think) to Long Beach. Frustrated, I cried because the traveling entailed with this trip has just been utterly stressful. I come up with the idea that the drive is only 4 hours away, and we should see what a rental would cost and cancel this flight, especially since there was no guarantee we would make it there the same day. Its rather inexpensive for a car, and we go ahead and rent one. We plan on arriving at the Long Beach airport at around 1pm to pick up our luggage, return the car, and grab a taxi to the 2pm ferry to Catalina. However, there is still yet another chapter to this story that I will finish blogging tomorrow (Wednesday Oct 31) about. Right now, it is currently 8:52pm California time. We are at the airport about to board our plane home. We'll see if we make it. We're already about past security and the plane is already here being cleaned. So far, it seems we might actually make this flight......,.ON TIME to boot.

TO BE CONTINUED.................