From Here to There and Back Again, a Tale by Mike Mulhern p1

[mightymulhern]

From Here to There and Back Again, a Tale by Mike Mulhern Part 1

This past weekend we went to Pittsburgh to visit my parents for father's day. The trip itself was designed to be a secret father's day visit for my dad. It was also to be our first overnight trip with Sydney since Christmas which was pretty rocky.

What should we do with the baby in PA?
The first big question was what to do with Sydney once we got there. Since Sydney doesn't crawl, my plan had just been to fold up a comforter on the floor and let her sleep on that. Piece of cake. Then about 2 weeks before the drip, we started finding Sydney in strange places and positions in her crib. She was rolling over and pushing with her feet propelling herself upward in the crib. Some nights we'd find a leg or arm hanging out between the bars. Clearly, this wasn't going to work if we didn't want to find her wedged between boxes under a bed, the couch, or a table.

As the moving around the crib thing was just starting, Meghan got a bee in her bonnet about getting Sydney a pack & play for my mom & dad's house. She sent me an email one day asking if I thought my mom would be willing to pick up a pack & play from someone on Craigslist if she could find one. I said maybe if it wasn't too far away but that I wouldn't be too surprised if she just went out and bought one which is pretty pricey for something that isn't going to be used very much. I pretty much dismissed this at that point but was later surprised when Meghan found one near my parent's house. Leave it to Meghan. I was also very proud of my mom for agreeing to meet with a stranger to purchase something we found on the Internet.

The Journey Begins
As with most things in life, nothing is easy. The day before our trip, Chicago land was rocked by multiple waves of thunderstorms bringing heavy rain, high winds, flooding, and allegedly hail to some areas. That meant that flights had been canceled, planes were in the wrong places, and lots of refugees were holed up at the airport waiting for an available flight out.

The happy Mulhern family of three thought not of these things though. We awoke early Saturday morning and started getting everything thrown together for the trip. We had packed the night before and were ready to go with the exception of getting Sydney up, dressed, and fed. Before walking out the door, I rattled off my mental checklist and it was clear that we had everything. We hopped in the car and it was off to the airport. Sydney was happy. We were happy. The adventure had begun. Upon arriving at the airport parking lot we unfolded the stroller, got our stuff together, and made for the train to take us to our terminal. Once we got to the train we found the elevator headed up, made small talk with Sydney's adoring fans, and got on the train. So far.. so good. The train let us out... still doing good. I'm going to fast forward now. ...many extremely slow elevators, one warning from someone leaving the terminal area about it being a mad house, some massive lines, and we're at the kiosk where we need to check a bag. Here is where the adventure begins.

Meghan fiddles with the kiosk and discovers that our flight has been canceled and we are now booked on one tomorrow morning (this is after what seemed like a really long journey from the parking lot). I about lost it. There was no way we were coming back here tomorrow. ...anyway to progress the story, there was some swearing and we got on stand by for a flight 2hrs after our original flight. We'd work our way to the gate, call the airline, and then figure the plan out from there.

Security
Getting through security wasn't too bad although as people who normally fly through and have the routine down, I was very self conscious about all of the fumbling I was doing to fold up the stroller and get it through the X-Ray machine. ...it is slightly bigger than the rubber stranded opening but actually will go through. The only thing weird was that the TSA agent said he was going to do a test Sydney's bottles. Whether he swabbed for explosives or too a swig I'm not really sure.

The Gate
Getting to the gate wasn't bad although the airport was packed with people stranded from the night before and we were on one of the famous United flights that was operated by some other division. As a result, we checked in a Terminal 1 and flew out of Terminal 2. But Sydney was good, we walked, everything was fine. Along the way, Meghan dialed United and began what resulted in a 1hr 20 minute stint on hold. We found a seat at a nearby gate, sat down, and ate breakfast while on hold.

To this point, Sydney has been an angel, she's still in her stroller. She's playing with our boarding pass envelope, I retrieved breakfast, Meghan sat on hold... At some point in time later, Sydney had thrown both halves on the envelope out of the stroller and was getting fussy. Meghan picked her up and upon inspection discovered that Sydney had a big ball of chewed up paper stuck to the roof of her mouth. I sat on hold for awhile, Meghan extracted the paper, changed and diaper, fed Sydney, and then we headed back to our gate – still on hold.

The gate are was jammed with people and Meghan wanted to get in line to ask the gate agent what our chances were of making it on this flight. Basically if we couldn't get on it we probably needed to go home, otherwise we'd have 2 more hours after that for another standby and that's just too long to keep Sydney at the airport. So Meghan is on the phone, standing in line, and I take the stroller and give Sydney a tour of Concourse F. In the end we did 2 laps around concourse E, and 3 through concourse F before Meghan was done. Double strike out. Standby is not first come first serve and they couldn't tell us what our odds were of getting on. United couldn't help us with any other flights. Our baggage was going to PA on the standby flight whether we were on it or not and if we elected not to fly tomorrow, we would have to make arrangements to have our bags sent back.

At this point we needed to kill some time and find some way to get Sydney to take a nap so we headed back over to concourse E which was much quieter. (Concourse E is as big as F but probably only had flights coming into a quarter of the gates if that. It's also just used by the smaller airlines) Along the way, Meghan talked someone at a restaurant into giving us some ice and a plastic bag to put Sydney's bottles in. We had gone from needing to store milk for a max of 2-3hrs to more like 5. After assembling a make shift cooler, we headed off and found a quiet spot. Sydney miraculously slept in Meghan's arms for 40 minutes.

At some point during this saga I went over and checked for flights to Columbus as a possible alternative. The bottom line there was that the times didn't jive well with using them as alternatives and they were, you guessed it, full as well.

Stand By
After Sydney's nap and some playing, we headed back to Terminal F to see what the standby list looked like. When we got there we say that 7 people had been assigned seats, one person was on a list to be assigned a seat, and the first two people who weren't confirmed were MULHERN/M. In the right hand corner of that screen read “Seats remaining: 1”. At that point we started debating whether one of us should get on this flight with Sydney and the other try for the next flight. I proposed offering someone $100 cash for their seat. We stood there watching the sign for quite awhile and with nothing changing and Sydney getting fussy, Meghan retired to a somewhat secluded nook in a nearby hallway and attempted to feed Sydney. Meanwhile, I stood there watching the sign. The names didn't change, but that 1 seat remaining did drop to zero as the flight started boarding. I nearly left the gate but hung around on some off random chance. …the chance came. After the plane had been boarded, I heard one flight attendant say “Mulhern” to the other one. Then they announced our name.

When I got up to the gate agent I asked her if both Meghan and I had made it on and she said yes. She was then irritated that Meghan wasn't standing right there and ask “well where is she in a gruff voice?”. I responded with an equally annoyed voice “in the hallway over there feeding our baby” and picked up my cell phone and called Meghan. As soon as I got off the phone some other guy walks up, all sweaty with his boarding pass and the gate agent says – “wait a minute”. At that moment I was sure we were getting bumped but we made it. Still, we were urged to move faster and I was very aware of all of my fumbling with the stroller. At least we made it.

De Plane... De Plane Boss!
Boarding the plane and getting our seats should have been easy. We were in seats 1A and 2A. Unfortunately we were told by the flight attendant that those seats only have one oxygen mask above them and therefore you can't fly with an infant on your lap and sit there. ...so we gate checked the baby (just kidding). She went on to tell us to go to the back of the plane where some seats were empty. (Let me remind you that we were 1 and 2 on a list of 38 people at the end of the stand by list and that I knew damn well there were no seats available on this plane unless perhaps I was serving drinks, helping fly it, or sitting on the toilet. Sure enough.. no seats back there. After working our way back up, we were told we'd have to ask someone else to move or get off. Meghan got one woman to move, but the guy sitting next to her hadn't been listening. After she bluntly explained that she was going to sit there with a baby and he could move to the front of the plane, he moved. FINALLY!

I'll take this moment to note that the bitchy flight attendant continued giving us dirty looks throughout the flight. ...that being said, when we read that United had laid off a whole bunch of flight attendants after our trip, we could only hope she was among them.

At this point we're seated, the plane is taking off, Sydney is tired and totally confused, and we are more than ready to be in Pittsburgh. ...and after 10-15 minutes in there air, Sydney couldn't take anymore. She whined and cried. There were a few screams. Meghan tried bouncing and rocking and did everything she could to comfort Sydney and keep her quiet. She gave her bottle and that helped some. In truth, she wasn't too bad, and I've heard babies wail a lot more on airplanes. That short hour and fifteen minute flight seemed to tick by forever.

When we got off the plane, we were on the ground and had to go up a big flight of stairs to get to the gate. I didn't realize this and started trying to unfold the stroller. Fortunately one of the baggage people on the ground pointed out that there was no way I was taking an unfolded stroller up those stairs and actually called another guy over to help us. The guy actually carried the stroller and car seat up to the top of the stairs for us while we dealt with Sydney and our carry ons.

...a series of elevators later, some luggage retrieval, a quick pit stop, and we were in the car en route for The House of Mulhern in PA.