At long last…

It is 10:04 AM on Wednesday morning and I have just landed in São Paulo, Brazil. I am waiting at the gate of my flight to Salvador where I will be staying. For those of you who knew my original travel plans, yes, I should have arrived here yesterday at 6:00 AM. My flight from Houston to Atlanta was delayed from 1:08 PM to about 5:30 PM because of thunder storms stretching across the entire route. Half an hour into the flight the pilot came on and announced that due to a failure in the weather navigation system we would have to make an emergency landing in Birmingham, Alabama, which then changed to Jackson, Mississippi. Unfortunately the Jackson airport is modest at best and only flies to Atlanta and Cincinnati so there were no hopes of flying directly from there to Brazil. The Delta staff told us they were acquiring taxi and hotel vouchers for us and while we waited to receive them and to rebook our flights we should go have a meal with the dinner vouchers. After I ate I had to reenter security to get back to my gate to get the vouchers for the taxi and hotel. I sat in the waiting area of a gate near security to put my shoes back on and one of the flight attendants asked if anyone was on the diverted flight to Atlanta. I told her I was and she ushered me into the plane still in my socks. I was a bit worried about my suitcases at this point because they had been unloaded and put on the baggage belt for those who were staying the night, but I didn’t have much time to protest. I got into Atlanta around 10:30 PM and checked to see if perhaps my flight to São Paulo had been delayed because of the bad weather. No such luck. The line for rebooking stretched on for at least 4-5 hours worth of waiting, so I called home and got the number for my aunt (my mom’s sister) who lives in northern Atlanta. I took a Marta train to Sandy Springs and she picked me up from the Marta station around 1:15 AM. I tried calling in to rebook when I got to the house but I never got through until the next morning when I got up. I rebooked for a 2:30 PM flight to JFK in New York, then a 9:00 PM flight from New York to São Paulo, and finally an 11:00 AM flight from São Paulo to Salvador. Fine and dandy, right? Well, my cousin drove me to the train station at 11:00 AM the next morning and I got to the airport by noon. I had to wait about 45 minutes in line to get my boarding pass, then the Delta agent told me to go to the baggage line to request my bags forwarded. By this time it was 1:15 PM and I asked her if I had time to wait in baggage if my flight was at 2:30 PM and she insisted that I go. The line wasn’t terribly long but it was extremely slow. I left it at 1:50 so that I would have time to get to security. Unfortunately, 40 minutes wasn’t nearly long enough. The line for security looked about 2 hours long by my estimation and my gate was in the furthest terminal. I explained my situation to a lady security guard and she directed me to a man in the security line, but he insisted that there was no way he could help me and I would have to wait in line. I went back to the lady guard and asked her if there was anything she could do and she told me where another security point was with nearly no line. (Why don’t they make this known to everyone and even the lines out?!) The other line was about 20 minutes long, but I didn’t have 20 minutes, so I spoke to a security officer again and got pushed up. It looked like I could just make it, except that I was chosen for a random search. They didn’t have a woman guard available there to search me so I had to wait… When I finally got through I had 6 minutes before departure and generally the planes leave the gate 5 minutes prior. I moved as fast as I could but I had to pass through terminals T, E, D, C, and B to get to A where my gate was. Even on the train this took about 8 minutes. I got to my gate a 2:33 PM, just minutes too late. I had to wait another 45 minutes to rebook my flight and I got on a 3:45 flight to La Guardia airport in NYC where I could take a taxi to JFK to catch my connection. I had 35 minutes to get to the gate for the Atlanta to NYC flight, which should have been plenty of time except the shuttle between terminals was shut down for maintenance and the moving sidewalks weren’t operating. I walked as fast as I could and made it the gate at 3:25. But in keeping with my unlucky streak the flight was delayed until 4:40 PM. I finally got to New York at 6:45 PM and shared a taxi to JFK with a family that I met on the flight. After inching our way through New York traffic we got to the airport at 7:40 PM, though I had been told by the Delta agent that I could make the drive in 20 minutes. I checked the computer and saw that my flight had already been delayed until 9:30, which gave me a little wiggle room. I had to wait in line again for my boarding pass (note to any travelers, DON’T GET PAPER TICKETS- you have to go through a hassle at each connection) which took me to about 8:30 PM. Security was brief, thankfully, though I was searched again. I got to my gate at 8:45 and finally had a chance to call home, wash my face, and brush my teeth. The flight was ultimately delayed until around 11:00 PM, but we boarded at 9:30 PM. From the moment I got to the gate all the staff has been speaking to me in Portuguese.