Day Five: Nothing But Travel

We woke up early on Saturday morning because we were anxious to get home. Even though we wouldn't be home until fucking midnight.

I re-folded all of our dirty clothes and stuffed the empty spaces with our new purchases. Amazingly we were able to fit everything just fine, although all of our bags were busting at the seams. Dustin and I were ready to go by 8am but we didn't even need to leave the hotel until 9:00am. We impatiently watched TV until it was time to head out.

We got to the airport around 9:30 and returned our rental. We had plenty of time to kill so we stopped at an airport restaurant and ate a full on breakfast. After we ate I made Dustin go to the other side of the airport for some last minute Portland items. This is where Dustin found both Pat and his boss some weird beers. He had to have them put in bubblewrap so they didn't break on the way back.  PDX is relatively small so it took us no time to find our gate. And then we had to wait some more. We sat there on our phones killing time when a woman sat down next to me. I could see her carry-on moving and so I tried to peek to see what she had in there. At first I thought it was a small dog but she told me it was her cat Alice. Apparently she was taking him to her sister's house in Houston while she traveled for a few months. Alice did not like being in this pet-carrier. She was meowing a lot. Poor thing. I had never seen a cat on a plane but I'm sure it's just as common as taking a dog.

We finally boarded and were up in the sky, on our way to Houston by 12:30pm (PST). The penguins second playoff game started the minute we got on the plane. Dustin had checked before hand to confirm if our flight had DirecTV. It did except there was a huge problem. As the plane was still boarding Dustin tried getting all set up with the game. The problem was the keypad that changed the channels didn't work. So we tried my seat. Nope, it didn't work either. Then I tried the empty seat next to us and was able to turn on the game for all of 5 min. Then the craziest lady sat next to us and changed the channel. Dustin was furious. He was even more furious when I helped her pay for the DirecTV. What was I supposed to do? I mean, she would have figured it out eventually. But he was in a pissy mood because he couldn't watch the game. I understood but at the same time there's only so much you can do when you're trapped in a plane. I just read for the next couple hours and let Dustin cool down. He finally got over it and was back to normal once our plane touched down in Houston.

Oh Houston. We hated that airport with a passion. We landed and were just thrown into the chaos. The place was packed like I've never seen an airport packed before. Dustin and I do not like people or crowds and were annoyed while navigating through the mess to our gate. On the way we stopped for bagels at Einstein's. There were very few seats left at our gate but we thankfully found a couple and ate our food. To make matters worse everyone around us was coughing and sneezing. I was just so paranoid I was going to get sick. I wanted to throw out a Halo bubble shield for Dustin and I. They kept announcing they were checking something mechanical on the plane and Dustin and I thought for sure we were going to be delayed but to our surprise we weren't. It was a smooth 2 hour flight back home and we both could not have been more excited to touch down. We had literally "wasted" an entire day traveling back. It was late, we were tired, and we couldn't wait to just be in our own bed. But before we could do that we had to take the shuttle to my car which we left in the parking lot. I actually love leaving my car because you don't have to rely/inconvenience/wait for anyone to pick you up. I like being independent that way when I can. So we were able to just hop in my car and be on our merry way.

We got home around 1am. I hopped out of that car as soon as I threw it into park and started looking for the kittiots. We had left them outside and our neighbor and Pat fed them. I knew they were fine but I missed them and I didn't want them to think we had abandoned them. I think it took them a minute to realize it was us because they were a little skittish. But as soon as we opened the door they knew we were back and happily rubbed against our legs.

It was a damn good trip.
But I was also really happy to be home.