Adjustments
My wife was supposed to be winging her way to Oregon today for the memorial service of her best friend's husband. This sounds like a fairly simple thing, but it has been anything but.
When we first made the reservations late last week, we booked and paid for the ticket and were feeling quite accomplished when we realized we had booked it for the wrong date. We applied for a refund on that purchase and purchased a ticket for the correct date, though at a higher cost. Still, we counted ourselves fortunate for having caught our stupidity sooner rather than later.
Her flight was at 10:30am this morning. It's 90-minutes when all goes well to get from our home to the Burbank airport. Because I'm a bit paranoid about traffic, we left at 7:30am. The traffic reports indicated a single accident on the 101 in North Hollywood, but it had occurred at 6:00 am and didn't appear to be causing any undue slowness.
We hit traffic about 40 minutes into the trip. Then it opened up again, and then shut down, hard. We moved two miles per hour. Literally. We were within five miles of where we needed to exit, so close but so far. By the time 10:30am rolled around we were still trapped in gridlock on the freeway. A call to the airport confirmed that the plane was departing on time. We arrived at the airport about 20 minutes after her flight left. The only other flight from United wouldn't get her in until nearly midnight - well after the memorial service. Another airline had a flight she could get on, but it would require us to purchase another ticket. Indecision. Calls back and forth to her friend. Finally the decision to go ahead and do it.
Only to find out that because the other flight left in less than 30 minutes, it was now too late to purchase a ticket for it, as they weren't allowed to send anyone up to the gate from the ticket counter in the final 30 minutes before a flight departed.
It appears that she wasn't supposed to go up for the service after all. It is a hard adjustment though, having paid for two tickets and spent close to six hours total on the freeways today. We have to trust that there's a reason for this, and that God was making that very clear to us - even if we haven't been told why.
Wow! What a day you had! Your wife and I had a conversation regarding the death of her best friend's husband so I know how much she wanted to be with her today. We do trust that there's a reason for her not being there and also understand that we may never know the reason. Something to consider..........take the 23 Freeway at Thousand Oaks to the 118 and then take I-5. We've taken this several times and it's worked well. Also AM 1070 has traffic updates every 5 or so minutes. But who knows? Don'tcha just love LA traffic?????
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Ya know, I considered taking the 118. But Sigalert seemed to show that the accident wasn't much of a problem except for the stretch of the 101 right around the 405 interchange - which is always a nightmare. But this was something I've not experienced heretofore - and hope I don't have to again. Yes, Gena's very disappointed, but trusting that while we may not understand why things worked out this way, that things are ok this way.
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Oh, how frustrating! I'm sorry it happened to you!
At the very least, the way you handle the situation is a lesson for the children. Those little buggers are always watching, dang it.
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