A few bumps in the road on the way to Disney...

All the training was done, everything was packed, arrangements were made for my dogs, so everything should have been set.  Wrong.  Mother Nature decided to mess with us and make it particularly difficult to get to the race that I had been dreaming about and working towards for months.

"Mommy, don't leave me!"

We started getting wind of the bad weather over the weekend.  We were set to depart early on Tuesday morning, and Saturday night was predicting some pretty rough weather to hit our area starting Monday evening.  My husband kept assuring me we'd be fine, but when I woke up Monday the forecast became extremely grim and I started to full out panic.  I asked my boss if I could leave a day early, and he thankfully agreed to let me go.  Zach was also able to get out, so we booked a new flight and headed to the airport as it started snowing harder, hoping that our plane would still get out.  Our flight was one of the few that hadn't been cancelled yet, and walking through the vacant airport was a tad eerie.

Our flight didn't end up getting cancelled until around 6pm.  We were devastated, but were able to get a full refund as they told us the next day they'd be able to get us out would be SATURDAY (um, that would blow every race but the marathon!)  We hadn't cancelled our Tuesday morning Southwest flight yet, so we wandered over to their ticket agent and were then informed that they had already cancelled that flight.  We decided to rebook through another airport and would just start driving.

We rented a car and hit the road.  It was pretty dicey, but we really thought we'd be able to get past the blizzard and be fine.  We didn't realize how bad it really was.  It was white out conditions at times with the strong winds, so there were times I would just stop driving and wait out the wind.  It was hard to see due to the snow, wind, and darkness, so I spent the time following tire tracks and driving down the middle of the road so I wouldn't go off the road like the other cars we had seen.  A few police officers helped light our way and guide us down the road, but they would stop and wave us on if we came to a disabled vehicle.  The road we wanted ended up being closed, and the firefighters waved us in a different direction.

We drove three hours to go what would normally take 45 minutes, and ended up calling it a night, staying at a hotel right on the Interstate.  We would leave after some sleep in the morning.  Naturally, I couldn't sleep, and spent the night looking at other airports and flights since I knew we wouldn't make our new flights.  I called Southwest and they fought me a bit on switching, but eventually switched us to an airport that was only about 30 minutes from where we were.  After watching the weather, checking the airport website to see that all flights were still scheduled, and reading some news sites we decided that this airport seemed far enough out that it wasn't getting hit hard by snow, and would be our best bet to get out.  Then, while watching the flight status, I noticed ANOTHER flight to Orlando opened up, so I ended up booking that, too.  I figured if I had two options to get us out, we'd have a better chance of leaving.  Since it was Southwest, we'd just get travel vouchers for a future flight for the one we didn't use.

We set out early to the airport.  The driving was rough for the first half of the drive, but cleared up and was easy after that.  We laughed at how close we had been to being out of the blizzard, had we just pressed a little farther the night before.  We dropped our rental car off and prepared to wait and hope in the airport.

Our flight ended up getting delayed, which made me really nervous and I tried to nap, but it was a no go.  It wasn't until we were actually sitting on the plane, MOVING, that I began to relax.  Finally, we were on our way!

You'd think that'd be ALL that could go wrong.  Wasn't that enough for two people?  Nope.  As soon as we landed, I turned on my phone and had a message saying that my luggage had decided that it would rather go to Tampa instead of Orlando.  GREAT.  At least all my race stuff was in my carry on. I supposed I could handle it.

We went to the baggage area and Zach went to wait for his suitcase while I stood in the baggage line.  A while later he appeared with MY suitcase.  So it was HIS that was missing.  Not good, as he hadn't brought a carry on.  We went through the process of filing a report and headed to Disney's Magical Express, me with my huge carry on and suitcase, Zach with nothing.  We kept making repeated calls to Tampa's baggage to tell them where to ship the bags, but there was no answer so I left about a billion messages.

That night we went to Downtown Disney, even though we arrived at the All Star Sport Resort around 9:30 pm and were EXHAUSTED.  We hunted for some clothes, but Zach decided to wait until the race expo the next morning, thinking he might be able to find some cheaper clothes there while he waited for his suitcase to arrive.

I can honestly say that no bed every felt as good as the one at All Star Sports when we finally went to bed for the night.  It was quite a stressful trip down, but we were both relieved to have arrived and would be able to attend the expo the following morning right when it opened, as planned.

It was a relief to be there!!!

Next post will talk about the expo and 5k!  Stay tuned and thanks for reading!!! :)