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It’s Thursday noon and we’re home. I just want to tell the story of our return journey before I forget:

We got to the Montreal airport at 2:30pm and found out that our 4:30 flight to Chicago was canceled on account of weather. (I had checked online earlier and there was no mention of this fact, although the flight had been canceled at 9am) The very helpful American Airlines ticket agent sent us back and forth between various counters, and eventually got us booked standby on an 8pm Air Canada flight to Las Vegas, then a US Airways midnight flight from LV to San Diego. This all took about an hour and a half. So then we went through customs and security and found a nice restaurant to wait in and had some food, and then just waited and waited until they boarded our flight, and then found out that YES there was room for us on the plane! And they even managed to get two adjacent seats for me and Henry, and one nearby for Dan. It was a huge relief. (Our fall-back plan was to leave Montreal at 6am the next morning, which would mean getting to the airport at 3am… Yeah.)

The Air Canada flight was very very pleasant. They had good food for sale and complimentary water, juice, coffee, etc. The stewardesses walked up and down the aisle offering cups of water quite frequently. They played two movies — Eregon, which delighted Henry (ghastly movie, but he loves it so) and then a sweet little movie about Beatrix Potter which I enjoyed very much.

Landed in LV at 10:30, took a shuttle to the Other Terminal, and followed the signs to our flight at gate B12. When we got there I had a funny feeling about it so instead of just waiting until they called us to board, I went up to ask if we were in the right place, and we weren’t! The posted gate info for our flight was WRONG. Henry was feeling really sick and queasy so we grabbed a spare wheelchair and Dan pushed him (and carried all our stuff, as usual) all the way back to A14, the proper gate. Got on the plane about 5 minutes later. Sat on the runway for a long time, then drove back to the gate — computer problems. They fiddled with the computers and got them fixed, but by they time the were fixed it was too late for our crew to fly again, so they called out a replacement crew. It took a long long time for them to get ready to fly, but we finally took off around 2:30am (I think). Landed safely in SD around 3:30. And — miraculously — our luggage made it too!

There was one last Cloud 9 shuttle heading to North County. It was very lucky for us that we caught it. If we’d missed it, we would have had to get a taxi, which I think would have cost a fortune, or waited in the airport for several more hours. Anyway we finally got home just before 5am.

I slept until 11:30 this morning. Dan and Henry are still sleeping :) Well, I guess I’ll go unpack, tidy up, and do all the dumb things I gotta do…