Traveling is Never Easy

I'm importing some posts from the Didenhover blog so that I can start this blog with the beginning of my adventures in Barbados. Here's the first one.

I made it safely to Barbados. The trip wasn't easy, but I made it. The adventure began at 3:18 AM when I woke up from my wonderful night's nap to get ready to leave for the airport at exactly 4:00 AM on the dot! All who doubt my ability to get to airports in a timely fashion should be surely impressed with my punctuality! I arrived at the SLC Airport in plenty of time to get checked in, check my bags, which were impressively under the weight limit, go through security, and sit down in comfy chairs waiting to board the first leg of my flight. So far so good.

The flight to Dallas seemed somewhat uneventful until we were heading down for our descent and hit some intense turbulence. The skies were so bad that they diverted us to Austin where we sat for 40+ minutes to wait out a storm that was hitting Dallas pretty hard. I guess the storm passed and we headed back towards Dallas. I was supposed to catch my flight to Miami leaving at 11:20 AM and by the time we were in the air leaving Austin it was already 11:40 AM--flight missed. I assumed the worst and when I got off the plane went to a ticket counter to figure out what I needed to do. Surprisingly, the lady said my flight hadn't left yet..most flights were delayed because of the storm. So I ran to the tram to take me to another terminal. When I arrived, the person at the gate informed us the flight had already left and kinda looked at us funny for even asking. (I say us because at this time I was running around the airport with a German family who was also on the flight to Miami headed to Aruba). Quickly the ticket people said that we had been rebooked on another flight that was leaving in 30 minutes....so we got back on the tram, ran through the airport, and made it to the gate about 10 minutes before it was supposed to take off. I thought, whew, I made it, I can get on the flight, and maybe even sleep a bit. As I handed the lady my ticket, something beeped and they waved me back. The German family ran on and I thought, just my luck! Well, something was wrong with my passport, or it didn't register, or something...really I have no idea. The good thing is that I got on the plane to Miami and the rest of the trip was somewhat uneventful. Wait, no I got held up at Passport Control in Barbados because I didn't have the address of where I was staying. I had to call Shirleen (the woman I'm staying with) to get the address and then I was able to get through. The senior missionaries greeted me (they were easy to spot) and took me to my final destination: Plantain Walk, Fords Road, Clapham, Christ Church, Barbados!!