Well, here we are in Spain... finally. For months now we have been anticipating this move while multiple delays kept us at home in Texas. Our journey here was uneventful except for lengthy airport delays and an Atlantic hurricane.
We arrived at the SLC airport in plenty of time to check our bags and sit patiently waiting at the gate. The plane left on time and arrived a little early in Atlanta. But arriving early isn't always a good thing because our arrival gate was still occupied by a departing plane. So we sat on the runway waiting for it to taxi away. When it finally did we only had about 20 to 25 minutes before our flight to Barcelona was scheduled to leave.
Because our seats were near the rear of the plane we were amoung the last to leave. Our challenge was to hurry to the train get to the international gates as quickly as possible. As would be our luck our departing gate was the furthest one down the concourse. All the other passengers had boarded the plane by the time we arrived.. or at least we thought so.
After boarding, the plane waited at the gate for a few more stragglers to arrive from connecting flights. The pilot finally started to taxi out onto the runway. We didn't get far however before the captain stopped the plane and announced that we needed to return to the gate for maintainance to check out a leak that had been found on the plane. It turned out to be a leak in one of the restrooms and they could repair it quickly, however an additional problem was discovered in the operation of some passenger video monitors and that would make the delay longer.
Eventually the repairs were made and the captain again had us underway. By this time we were only an hour and a half behind schedule. As we taxied out we could see lightning in the night sky and a light rain was falling. The captain then announced that the winds had shifted and we would be departing from a different direction which required us to turn around and taxi to the other end of the airport. As we moved in that direction, an additional announcement come over the intercom informing us that the airport had stopped all flights from landing and departing. We would be sitting on the runway for awhile waiting for conditions to change.
Eventually we were informed that we had been cleared for takeoff and we were only fifth in line. We held our breath until we were in the air and on our way. In all our flight had been delayed for 3 hours and 20 minutes.After the flight attentants had served dinner and cleared the resulting debris, April took a sleeping pill and drifted off to sleep. Uncompfortable as it was she did manage to sleep. I played games and watched movies on the video monitor, dozed a bit but never fell asleep. The flight was rough with a lot of turbulance due to a weakening Atlantic hurricane but we arrived safely.
In Barcelona, we gathered our bags and met up with our contacts here. By the end of the day we were in a hotel room in Cambrils, Spain; exhausted but excited for the adventures awaiting us here.
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