At 7:05, we had the bags dropped and they were nowhere near the limit in weight. We picked up a few last souvenirs at the Made in Oregon Store and then wraps from the Beach Shack. I ordered a Chicken Caesar and my husband got Thai Peanut with chicken for a total of $17.25. They took forever to get done.
The TSA line was nearby and we were through it in a minute, thanks to our PreCheck status, and on our way at 7:31. The gate was a simple 3 minute walk and we were soon seated at Gate E3. The terminal was warm, perhaps too much so. I took a picture of the terminal carpet, because my daughter told me Portland had a thing about that carpet. Indeed they do-there is even a Wikipedia entry on it!
At 8:30, we were seated in 31B and C on United Flight 679 to Chicago. Sixteen minutes later was pushback and we took off at 8:56. In flight, we read, did puzzles, etc. We also ate "lunch", which was the wraps. Mine really didn't taste good and my husband's was just so-so.
At 2:16 pm CDT, we landed in Chicago. That airport is huge- taxiing to Gate B12 took 14 minutes. It was partly cloudy here. When we got off the plane, we recognized Eli's from a food show, and bought a slice of chocolate chip cheesecake to have later for $4.23. Our phones suddenly picked up messages that had been sent in flight and we got 2 flight delay warnings.
We worked our way through the crowded terminal and passed through a really cool underground level with neat lights.
At 4:40 we got another delay message on the phone, which was finally on the display above, as well. Now the delay from 5:45 to 6:20 had been delayed to 7:26 pm. All along, it said that we were waiting on equipment. Searching on line, I found out that it was not our plan that was delayed. That one arrived on time. They'd changed us to a plane that was 3 hours late leaving Denver. To be even more irritating, there was a flight to OIA, that was scheduled for 7:05, which was to have been after ours and was now before ours! Why not use that plane? Because they didn't want to hurt their on-time record. This way, only one flight was late, not two.
At 5:30, we moved to the food court for Chicago-style pizza from Reggio's, because, you know, it's Chicago. The small pizza we split was $7.99 and tasted pretty good. We also split a soda for $2.59.
We'd struck up a conversation with a pair of young people heading home to Daytona Beach from Ireland. The guy was in a different boarding group, so I continued my conversation with the young woman while we waited and waited to board, while the arriving flight disembarked.
Eventually, they started the boarding process. Suddenly, the ground personnel were yelling at us to board quickly and take our seats or the flight would be canceled because it would be illegal to fly. Huh? How was this our fault? You can only board so fast. Later, we decided the flight crew must have been waiting so long that it was getting near the edge of their cutoff time.
At 7:40, we were finally seated in 29 B and C on United Flight 639 to Orlando. Pushback was at 7:59 and we finally took off at 8:24. The captain kept apologizing for the delay and said she hoped to make up time in the air. I was really glad we had not asked our daughter to pick us up, since she had to work early the next day.
At 11:22 EDT, we landed at OIA and 15 minutes later we were in the terminal waiting for our luggage, which seemed to take its own good time arriving. We were lucky, when the conveyor belt finally started moving, ours was fairly near the beginning and we had it at 12:01 am. My husband called Payless Parking to come pick us up. When they arrived, we had to wait for others who took longer to show up.
At 12:20, we were finally on our way and Payless was just 10 minutes away. At 12:39, we were in our car and on our way home, where we arrived at 1:10 am!
Oregon was fantastic- a great choice for my 50th state. (I will just try to forget how awful today was.)
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