Seattle Day 5, Going Back to UT.

I intentionally didn't say "going home" in the title of this post. I didn't realize how homesick I was for the Pacific NW until after we got up there. Truly, Nick and I love Washington State.

While we were looking forward to sleeping in our own beds again, we weren't looking forward to leaving.

But, the time came. And we loaded everything in to the car to head for the airport. Our rental car, while we were in town, was a Ford Focus. I can't really say anything good about this car. At least I know there is one car I will not even consider buying when the time comes to purchase our next vehicle. In regard to the car, Nick's exact words were: "this car sucks donkey balls". Normally, I wouldn't post something so crass on my blog, but Nick's assessment was spot-on.

Because the car as a turn radius of zero, among other flaws... I was really worried about making it to the airport.

It started snowing on the morning of our departure. Nick and I were watching the news in our hotel room as they did major coverage of the snowstorm. I know it was supposed to be serious reporting, but we kept getting a laugh out of some of the things that were said.

We saw pictures of people parking their cars on the snowy freeway and walking home (this is typical). A few times one of the newcasters mentioned the "Great Storm of 2008". With that storm I think Seattle got 1.5 inches of snow. At the first hint of a snowflake the city shuts down. No joke. I'm not trying to poke fun. Driving in Seattle, when it is snowy is the pits. But a lot of that comes because of incompetent winter drivers.

Anyway, we left early for the airport. Made it through the heinous part they call "security". And arrived at our gate, only to be told that our plane was having mechanical problems and that our flight was delayed while they tried to find another plane.

2.5 hours later.... they found another plane. We boarded, AND THEN we were told that there was going to be even more of a delay, because the snow had shut down every runway but one! Nick was watching the headlines on his iPhone, and as we pulled away from the gate he saw that a plane had skidded off of the runway at SeaTac, thus causing more problems! We were worried that we were never going to get in the air. Fortunately, they allowed us to take off. We were the last flight allowed out (they had already cancelled all in-bound flights). We got home 5 hours later than planned, but at least we made it.

And the SeaTac airport got a record-breaking; 2.5 inches of snow!