Jay and I were supposed to leave for our trip to Ireland and Scotland on Sunday, but Hurricane Debby had other ideas.
We dropped our dog, Zack, and our cat, Max, off at their kennel Saturday morning and then drove to my brother’s house to leave our other cat, Pepper. Early Sunday morning, I was notified that our plane had been delayed from departing at 3:38 PM to departing at 4:51 PM. We were flying from Tallahassee to Charlotte, then to London Heathrow, and finally to Edinburgh. The delay was not really a problem because we had a long layover in Charlotte.
On Sunday, we packed my car to head to the airport. I backed out of the driveway and started down our road. We live about 40 minutes from the airport. I noticed that the tire pressure warning light was on, but I ignored it because it sometimes malfunctions. This time, though, something felt off, so I stopped the car and checked the tires. Sure enough, the driver’s-side rear tire was flat.
I turned the car around and slowly drove back to the house. We had parked Jay’s car in the garage and manually closed the garage door. The garage door has to be opened and closed manually because it does not work properly. We went through the house into the garage and opened the door by hand. Then we unloaded everything from my car and transferred it into Jay’s car.
After that, I backed Jay’s car out of the garage and drove my car inside. We manually closed the garage door again and walked back through the house to the front door. Once we got into Jay’s car, he pointed out that he needed gas. We drove to the gas station and had to wait for an open pump because so many people were filling up their vehicles ahead of the hurricane. After getting gas, we headed to the airport.
At the airport, we checked in and got our luggage tags. We both have TSA PreCheck, so going through security was quick and easy. We found our gate and waited for our flight. About five minutes later, I received a notification that our flight to Charlotte had been canceled.
I went back to the check-in counter to try to get rebooked. The clerk could not help me and instead gave me a card with a phone number to call. I called the number and was able to get rebooked on a flight scheduled to leave around 3 PM on Monday. However, I did not think we would actually be able to take that flight because the hurricane was expected to hit our area Monday morning.
Sure enough, when I woke up Monday morning, I found out that our Monday flight had also been canceled. We were rebooked on a flight leaving Tuesday at 5 PM, which would get us to Edinburgh around 1 PM on Wednesday.
That meant that instead of spending three nights in Edinburgh, we would only have one night there. We also had tickets to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo on Tuesday night, which we would now miss.
Let’s hope we are finally able to leave on Tuesday.
