Leaving for our Flight To Costa Rica and the Flight Itself

The journey to Costa Rica was interesting, but then again...when is our lives ever not interrupted by something "interesting"?

Tuesday, after finally finishing the house and packing...(more or less on the finishing part of the house)....we loaded our 15 bags into a mini van, along with 6 people, and started the long journey to Washington DC to catch our plane (which was actually not leaving until Wednesday).

Of course, getting into the van to leave was easier said than done. Not only did we have to say goodbye to some very dear friends in our front yard, but we also had to convince Scooby Doo (our cat...not the cartoon character)that it was important for him to come out from under the porch so one of Jacob's best friends, Isaiah, could take him home with him. (Yes, Scooby did not make the trip with us...:-( but $700-$800 is a lot to spend to get your cat to Costa Rica with no guarantee they will give him to you when you arrive.) Apparently, Scooby figured out what was going on because not only did he sleep in the carrier several times before our trip to make sure we didn't leave without him, but after we returned the carrier, he slept in the suitcase.

When we were ready to leave Scooby ran under the porch and Jacob had to crawl under the porch to drag him out. Then when Jacob went to hand him over to Isaiah he actually clung to Jacob and pushed Isaiah away with his paws, the whole while meowing what I swear sounded like "Nooooo!" It was very sad to watch! Then when Isaiah finally got ahold of the cat and went to crawl in the van, Scooby tried to jump out the driver's door, but Isaiah caught him by the foot. :-( We talked to Isaiah the night we arrived in Costa Rica and he said Scooby was very depressed.

We arrived at the airport around 6:00pm or so and after Angie, Tim, and Julie helped us get everything inside the airport we had the hard task of saying goodbye to them. (I still blame Julie and Angie for making me so sad when they left). That was such a sad thing to go through...saying goodbye to good friends.

Then we spent the night in the airport...notice I said spent the night without any mention of sleeping....and waited around until we could check our baggage in at
4:30am. After we checked our 7 suitcases and 2 bikes, we headed to security with our 6 pieces of carry-ons. (3 duffle bags and 3 personal bags...the personal held camera's, computers, and personal papers). As we waited to go through the metal detector...barefoot. by the way..I got pegged as a random security check...lucky me!:-(....and Bob got tagged for a security check because his metal knee beeped (which the doctor swore wouldn't happen). So both Bob and I are now being wanded and inspected while Jacob is trying to collect all of our carry on luggage as it comes through the x-ray machine. After retrieving my sandals from the security guy, I went over to help Bob and Jake put our carry-ons on the little metal roller cart we had purchased to help wheel our carry-ons around in time to have a security person tell me that our last bag was now tagged for inspection....so off we go to the counter so they could inspect it with a wand. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Do you think they had this planned when they saw us arrive at the airport with 15 pieces of luggage and a one-way ticket out of the country?...I'm thinking the same thing.

That was when our luck seemed to change. As we were getting ready to board the plane in Washington DC, the man checking us through the gate looked at our 6 baqs of carry-ons with a funny face so I explained that my husband had just had knee surgery so I was using the roller cart to make it easier on him. That was when the guy turned to the computer and told me he would check our 3 carry-ons in to be put under the plane all the way to Costa Rica at no charge. 3 bags down...3 to go.

After our plane arrived in Houston, we took a monorail type airport tram/train thing to the section we needed to catch our flight to Costa Rica with only enough time to order something to eat and sit down for 5 minutes before they started to board. That flight was uneventful too and after we arrived in Costa Rica, we waited for everyone else to exit before we did. (1. Because Bob's knee was pretty stiff and 2. Because we were the next to last row of seats on the plane.) As we approached the door to exit, the flight attendant asked Bob if he needed a wheel chair (Bob was using his cane at this point), to which Bob said no thank you. Then he turned to exit the plane and was greeted by a man with a wheelchair who offered him a ride, which he again politley declined.

We then headed to Customs so we could clear it before going to get our luggage. As we rounded the corner, we found a long Customs line but a lady who worked there came up to Bob and pointed to the handicapped lane and said, "Expresso, Senor, Expresso" and shooed us into that line. Gotta love that cane!!

We finally made it to baggage claim and found all of our luggage already off the spinner thing and actually stacked almost all together in one spot. Things were definitely looking up from the security check 8 hours before in Washington DC. As we started to put our luggage onto several carts for the long haul through the final check and outside, airport workers came by so I asked where we would find the shuttle from oure hotel. He sent another worker out to get a great big cart so we wouldn't be dragging 5 little ones around while he pulled out his cell phone and called the hotel for us. Then he, and the other worker, loaded all of our bags and bikes onto the large cart and wheeled it over to the last check point where they had to unloaded all of our bags onto another xray machine before walking around to the other side to put them back on the big cart. They then wheeled everything outside and found our drive, wheeled everything across the street into the parking garage to the drivers van, and then helped load evything into the van. Yes things had definitely gotten better!

After a 20 minute drive we were at our hotel and the driver was unloading our stuff with two helpers from the hotel. This is where it looked like our luck was turning bad again but......that story is for another time!