The Day Before Takeoff

We took the day before we left to finish up a few errands in town, drop off itineraries to the parents, and slow down for a few minutes before the big trip. Plus, it was in the 90's that day, and our AC had decided to quit pumping out cold air, so we were sort of avoiding the hotbox in the house. Sitting at lunch in the afternoon, I noticed a new voice mail on my phone even though the phone didn't ring. Turns out, it was a customer representative from Delta calling. We're in the middle of Applebee's for lunch on Labor Day weekend, so yeah, it was a little noisy in there. I'm trying to listen, while my wife is asking who is it? What do they want? What's wrong? I guess my facial expressions were a little odd because the conversation starts with "mechanical issue" and "canceled flight." Oh crap! We're leaving to go to the airport in 18 hours and I hear canceled flight!

Turns out they rerouted us through Paris instead of going through Amsterdam. Which actually would put us in Edinburgh 3 hours earlier. In addition, we received a credit for future flights. I scrambled quickly to email my contact who arranged the trip to see if our driver would be available sooner, and if we would be able to get into our room earlier than normal. Check and check. Ok, mini crisis avoided.

We get home, get 90% of the packing completed, and sit down for a minute. Then we discover that our water was not working. The pressure gauge had died. At 5:00 on a Sunday. The day before our vacation. It was bad enough without AC, but without water!!! Hurry to Home Depot, grab a new pressure gauge, get it installed just in time to take a shower and try to relax. Another crisis avoided.

As you can imagine, neither of us slept a bit Sunday night. Between the no-AC, excitement of the trip, worry about missing the alarm and not getting up for the 2 hour drive to the airport...on a good day, yet alone Labor Day Monday with traffic heading home from the beach back to DC/Baltimore/Pennsylvania. And worry about how the clubs were packed. And worry about the layovers and security check-in times. And worry about an 8 hour flight. And excitement that we would be in St Andrews in less than 30 hours!

Then the big day was upon us!!!!