Plane, Train and Automobiles (well, not the train)

We had a plane reservation to go to Dallas for Tuesday late morning, and the plan was to get to Dallas that day, drive the next morning to Shreveport for Jan's mom funeral service.

At 9am that morning, Jan got a computer generated phone call from Southwest saying that our flight was canceled. They did not offer an alternative. So, after I got back from printing the funeral brochure we started looking for alternatives. The next 3 flights from SWA was also canceled. However, after some pleading, the agent talked to her supervisor, and managed to book us up for the 520pm flight. She told Jan to get to the airport as soon as possible, at least 3 hours early. Since we are not sure if that too will be cancelled, and knowing that if we can get to Dallas earlier we would have a better chance of driving to Shreveport the same day, we decided to also check with American Airlines. On the AA website none of their flights to Dallas showed any cancellation, so Jan called them, and after a 10-15 minute wait, we got an agent who promptly told her that most of their Dallas flights were also canceled. We then called the car rental agency in Dallas about our delayed arrival.

At the Denver airport, we hung around for our flight, and saw a couple of Dallas bound flights that were still on, but since we have already checked our baggage for the SWA schedule, we waited. At around 430pm the SWA public announcement mentioned that the weather in Dallas is getting worse, and to be prepared for getting stranded in Tulsa or remain in Denver. Well, we have a funeral to go to, besides are bag will end up in Tulsa if we didn't go, so we waited and finally boarded. The flight to Tulsa was un-eventful, and about 15 minutes before we landed, the flight attendant (Dallas based) told us that we'd probably will be able to continue to Dallas. That was a relief, since we knew that they too wanted to go home.

Two people boarded in Tulsa, and we continued on to Dallas. Once near DFW just as we were descending, we saw no visibility from the side windows due to freezing rain. Once or twice we saw some clearing and can see the lights below, but the pilots handled it well, and we landed safely around 930pm. By the time we got to the baggage carousel, our bags were already there. Hooray for SWA efficiency. I've never experience that with any other airlines.

We then took the courtesy bus to Thrifty rental car. It took us almost 45 minutes to get a dingy Dodge Caliber that reeked with cigarette smoke, manual window crank, and a drive shaft that in my opinion is out of balance as it goes wump wump wump as we drove it. The rental agent reminded me of Steve Martin watching the airline agent tapping on her computer and staring at the screen for what it seemed an eternity. Ditto here, and I even made a snide comment saying, you must have a really slow computer there. In any case, we made it home, swapped cars with Melissa's Nissan Xterra, picked up Lauren and Jonathan who were already waiting there. By that time it was past 11pm, and we left Dallas in freezing rain towards Shreveport.

Just past Tyler, the freezing drizzle turned to rain, and by the time we reached Shreveport, it was 2 am, and the local temperature was 36°F. We were so relieved that we made it there safely, and thank the Lord for keeping us save. We checked into a hotel, slept for about 4 hours and was able to be at the funeral on time.