An Arizona Wedding: Birthday in the Airport

Howdy blogging world! 

It's been a little quiet around these parts because Ian and I just spent the last four days traveling to Scottsdale, AZ for his cousins wedding. The plan was to travel to Arizona early Friday morning (which also happened to be Ian's 25th birthday!), spend the day there with his family before the wedding on Saturday, and then fly home on Sunday. A quick weekend, but we would pack as much into it as we could.

However, things turned out a little differently, and we ended up spending Ian's entire birthday in the airport. 

Maybe we should have known that traveling on Friday the 13th was bound to come with some hiccups, so at 6am when we were sitting on the plane ready to go and the captain came on the announcement system and said that the plane was broken and we weren't going anywhere, we shouldn't have been surprised. So it was back into Reagan International Airport we went to sit in our own city, fifteen minutes away from home, for seven hours while we waited on parts to be flown in to fix our broken plane. GREAT.

I thought taking self portraits of my angry face was the best way to cope.

We weren't projected to leave until 11 am, well after we would have hopped on our connecting flight in Atlanta, so Ian joined the hoards of angry travelers trying to get on one of two other flights into Atlanta with no luck. We were told to wait until they called our flight to Phoenix to make accommodations, so when they called us and Ian was in the bathroom, I just about burst into tears when the woman told me that since we were going to miss our flight in Atlanta, the next one into Phoenix wasn't until 9:00 that night.

 "Really? There is NOTHING before then?", I said, my voice wavering.

"Nope", said the unsympathetic airport woman. 

I was about to stomp my foot and say "But it's my husband's BIRTHDAY!"

Unfortunately, there was no special birthday plane that flies in especially for us decorated with cake and sprinkles, so we finally boarded our plane to Atlanta to become very well acquainted with the Atlanta airport. For nine hours.

First things first, we were told that we were being compensated by receiving free round-trip flights to anywhere in the US for  a future trip. Then we went to the AirTrain desk and told them our sob story and were upgraded to first class for our flight to Phoenix as well as our flight home. With meal vouchers in hand, we decided it was time to make the best of it and we were going to have a fun birthday celebration in the airport. 

It was off to Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint, where we enjoyed some amazing BBQ brisket, drinks, and complimentary shots of moonshine.

We lingered over our drinks at the restaurant and played Words with Friends on our phones for probably longer than necessary before setting off to explore the fine world of airport shopping. Ian slept for a little bit, I bought a stack of magazines, and surprisingly nine hours of eating, drinking, and people watching went by pretty fast.

9:00 rolled around, and we boarded the plane to be wined and dined in first class. I sure didn't hate it.

Before we knew, Ian's birthday was almost over. But there was one more birthday perk we were going to finagle....

A Ford Mustang rental car. Nice work, birthday boy.

Stay tuned for the second installment of our trip: The Smoke Tree Resort, our home for the weekend with a vintage feel.