Run Run Rudolph

When we were looking at tickets to go to the wedding in the sticks, the prices were outrageous along with 3 layovers. We thought we were being quite clever by expanding our search to include the Tampa airport. The prices were substantially cheaper, 1 layover and only 6 hours of travel time versus 12 hours. Seems great right? Well we left Fort Myers around 2ish and our flight was at 6:06pm. One would think that 4 hours should be ample enough time to get to Tampa right? WRONG. The first traffic jam we hit was small and once we passed it we were still pretty happy with our decision to save money and fly out of Tampa.

That is until we hit the second one…..it had a couple of warnings like “expressway shut down 9 miles ahead ……all 4 lanes;” Our exit was 8 miles ahead…..just maybe we would be able to get off and bypass the accident. Well it doesn't really matter how many miles ahead the accident is when you are on a bridge. So there we sat and watched the clock and continued to watch the clock. We didn't move for over an hour and a half. We finally started moving around 5:47pm. We still had another 3 miles, had to park the car, make it thru security and to the gate..........all in 20 minutes.


We pulled into the parking garage at 6:03pm……..we had three minutes. You know that song from Home Alone when they were running through the airport? “Run run Rudolph” Andrew and I were singing that while we were high kneeing it through the airport. We were literally jumping hurdles, pushing people out of our way and “undressing” while we attempted to make it thru security (well maybe not literally).

Thank goodness that we were already checked in (love the Internet) and had planned on carrying our luggage on. We made it thru security without to many hiccups; apparently my laptop, which had to be rescanned, is more of a hazard than the razor I snuck on. While I was impatiently waiting for my laptop, Andrew was at a full sprint headed toward the gate. We finally got there (6:20pm) and the lady at the front desk said, "we just closed it but we might be able to get you on."

We ran down the hallway to find out that the door was locked. I thought for sure at this point we were defeated but the lady started knocking and by some grace of God they opened it and let us on. As soon as I got on I wanted to high five my fellow companions while shouting “woo hoo……we made it!.” Needless to say they didn’t seem to receptive to my celebratory dance……. actually I think they were quite annoyed that we were twenty minutes past take off time. Instead, I quickly took a seat......any seat (they already gave ours away) and quietly gloated to myself that we made it!

By the way…….the only way that we made it was because one of the pilots was sitting in the same traffic jam as us.