Matthew and I left the house around 1ish... I think. I double checked the lists and then triple checked them to make sure we had all of our stuff. AND WE DID! Yay! Even DH, whose mother swears he always forgets to pack underwear. So far, so good---although our checked bag had been 49.8lbs, so we had transferred a bunch of stuff into DH's carryon.
My mom drove us to Portland, which is about 2 and a half hours away from us. Our Walmart run was pretty uneventful. I had to get tapes for the camcorder and we decided at the last minute to get some advil PM in the hopes that I might be able to get a teeny little bit of bad airplane sleep (yeah right). DH suddenly decided that the snacks I had packed weren't sufficient for him, and we also bought cheetos.
We met my aunt and crazy cousins and went out to pizza at Izzy's. Yum. My aunt lives right next to the airport, so she is everyone's airport shuttle. The plan was to transfer all of our bags into her car, and she would drive us to the airport at 9:30. Nothing would stop the plan.
Of course, we forgot to take into account Murphy's Law. During the drive to Portland, I had taken off my jacket because it was 80 degrees out. Also, I took the two books out of my bag before I went into Walmart. I just didn't want to carry all of that. I had Beowulf (for my Medieval lit class) and the biography of Walt Disney. Well, when we transferred our stuff... guess what got left behind. Yup. My books and my jacket. Not too big of a deal. But I prefer to have reading for long flights during which I never sleep, and it's nice to have a jacket when we land at freezing PDX after 9 days in Florida.
Oh well. My aunt lent me some books, and I called it good.
To kill some time, we dropped by the Grotto. It's actually a Catholic shrine in Portland. We're not Catholic, but it's a very pretty place. We wandered around for a while and admired the greenery until it occurred to me that I was going to be walking for days on end and I should really be sitting on my butt right now. When we got back to the parking lot, we realized the gates were shut.
I think it may have been wind or something. Either that or we were there after hours, LOL! I have pictures to post later. My memory card adapter is in my checked bag.
We got to the airport around 9:45pm and went straight to the Continental desk, where they had a very confusing sign. It said something like this:
Pre Paid Baggage
Print Boarding Pass
(No Baggage)
HUH?
We had checked in online and printed our boarding pass. Our luggage was paid for. But the no baggage thing totally threw me. We stood around in confusion for several minutes, much to the amusement of the family sitting on a bench nearby, until we finally got in line. As we waited in line, I told DH to stick our yellow DME tags on our bag. He took a look at the instructions on the back, and read them backwards. He peeled off the middle and then got really confused. I'm really glad we had two tags and one checked bag, LOL! I figured out the problem and we ripped it off and put the second one on right. Meanwhile, the family snickered. At least it was entertaining to them.
DH, having never even set foot in an airport, was fascinated by everything. I let him look at the prohibited items case while I looked for our flight. WHAT? WHERE IS THE FLIGHT TO ORLANDO?
I gaped for a while, and then realized our flight was to HOUSTON, then Orlando. Maybe I shouldn't fly at night.
Security was empty, seeing as it was now 10pm or so. We threw all of our junk into bins and sent them through the xray. DH beeped. He was still wearing his belt. I didn't beep. I WIN!
My family has a tradition whenever we fly out of PDX: We always grab coffee at the Starbucks just outside of security. We got through and all I saw was a COFFEE PEOPLE! WHAT? WHERE IS THE STARBUCKS?
Thankfully, we had already got our Starbucks fix earlier in the day, right after we hit the road. FYI, there is also a Starbucks right behind us by gate D5. We are now sitting here, using the free WiFi with the laptop plugged in. We board our flight in about half an hour. DH wants to get on Facebook and play Mafia Wars. I think I better go.
Make sure to check out my Twitter page (link in the first post) for LIVE updates while we're gone! We don't want to pay for internet at the hotel.
SEE YA REAL SOON!