The Less Than Grand RV Adventure

The Grand RV Adventure started in a less than grand way. After staying up almost all night doing last minute things while keeping a watchful eye on the weather channel,  I settled down  for an hours' nap or so, content in the knowledge that the Dallas Fort Worth airport, our stopping point from Shreveport to Las Vegas, has escaped the wrath of the storms belting our part of the country that night. As  Aileen was accompanying an aunt to an early morning hospital visit, Ariel offered to drop us at the airport . At 0645 we set off for her house, and by 0650 were on the way to the airport. The road chosen is usually devoid of traffic at 7, but it must have been a special day. We were running a little behind schedule, but I was feeling pretty good about our ETA at the airport, when suddenly my phone rang. It was Andy, and I assumed, but only partially correctly, that he was wondering where we were. The part I wasn’t prepared for when was when I told him our whereabouts and he said- Right, good, I’ll give you the bad news when you get here. And hung up..

Well I can tell you we all began to run through  the scenarios. Chris had broken something, the tickets were no good, someone had stolen Las Vegas…When I staggered through the terminal door and saw the line of passengers waiting to check in, I thought our flight was cancelled. No, our flight to Dallas was on, but the one to LV was cancelled and we had been rebooked on one landing at 9. This was not a great solution, in my eyes, since because I had arranged dinner and tickets to the Blue Man Group as a thank you to Andy and Chris and to jointly celebrate Anthea's and my 30th anniversary. My heart sank, but being ignorant of the full extent of the situation in Dallas, I had a hope that things would work out. They did, but not the way I thought.. We got conflicting stories in Shreveport about what to do in Dallas. Andy had been told we had been rescheduled, I was told that the flight was waiting for us and we needed to be quick when we got to Dallas. As it turned out, Andy’s information was correct, and we spent much of Wed going from terminal to terminal via airport train to see if we could get a standby flight. I spoke to any American Airlines person I could find that looked the least bit helpful, and in the end, by piecing together information gleaned from several sources, and after having our new flight cancelled and rebooked for the following day, we discovered that American Airlines had somewhere between 50 and 80 aircraft damaged by hail, big hail, softball sized hail. For those of you unfamiliar with an American softball, it is about the size of a grapefruit. That kind of hail can kill you, and it had wreaked havoc on AA's planes. Dallas is American's home hub, consequently many flights were affected and it finally made sense why they were cancelling flights with so many passengers looking for transport.They just didn't have the planes available, as so many were being inspected. Also, the weather system that went through Dallas continued on its merry way through Arkansas and came perilously close to my Aunt's house, with a mile wide tornado tearing up that part of the world, which then went on to other major cities with hub airports. This was the system that came a couple of days after the one that tore up Joplin Missouri, and it came very near to Joplin again.
I fought some serious feelings of feeling sorry for myself, thinking I had spent so much time planning that evening and spending a not inconsiderable sum for the shows and dinner, and I kept thinking what a disaster it   what and how much I had wanted Andy and Chris to see the show, and how disappointed I was. And then, I began to think of the folks in the storms and how much they had lost and it didn't seem like the end of the world anymore that I wasn't going to get to see a show.
 So, after it became apparent we weren't going to leave Dallas on the 25th, we began to take stock of the situation. We would miss the show, but if we did leave on the following day, that would still put us in Las Vegas on the day we were scheduled to pick up the RV. The sticking point on that was that the RV company required renters flying in from any distance to spend a night in Vegas before they were allowed to pick up the RV. A call to the RV rental company resulted in them allowing us to take possession of the vehicle the day we arrived. I called the box office and they agreed to refund out tickets in light of the extenuating circumstances. Then we asked American to put us up in a hotel, which they would not do, but they did get us a good rate in a very nice hotel.
 Things were looking up. We checked into the hotel and got our bearings, then decided some grub would be nice. After inquiring about the locations of restaurants close to the hotel, we decided to walk to one about 50 yards from the hotel, PappadeauxPappadeaux's, I realized that the day had turned from a disaster into one I will actually cherish as a gem to be stored in my mind's vault, to be taken out and appreciated again and again.