the worst travel experience ever... (part 2)

...was capped off by our triumphant return to home at 3am this morning. After leaving brother Stu's place shortly before 1pm (giving us more than ample time to make our 5pm flight), we quickly found that there was a 6-mile backup going into the I-64 tunnel, so we turned around and went through the I-664 tunnel. Just outside of Williamsburg, traffic ground to a halt and we were left wondering for 20 minutes whether this was the "usual" northbound traffic of northern Virginians going home after a weekend at VA Beach, until we passed the accident scene. We made it to the terminal at about 3:15pm and promptly found out our flight to JFK had been cancelled due to thunderstorms around JFK, and there wouldn't be another until 6am the following morning. Even better, there were only 3 seats on that flight, so Finn would get
to sit on our laps. We were all set to be booked on that flight when I noticed that the 3pm to Boston had been delayed until 5:15, and there was room on the flight, so we decided to fly into Boston and then rent a car 1-way so we'd get home that night. Using Richmond's incredibly slow wireless connection, we got a confirmation with Hertz (Enterprise and Alamo having failed us first -- Alamo more dramatically, since Enterprise said "Oh, we don't do 1-ways more than
N miles; the guy from Alamo had me on the line for 10 minutes before figuring out that he had no cars at that location). The Boston flight was delayed until 6pm, and then we finally boarded at 7pm, as rain starting pouring down and lightning flashed. At 8:45pm we finally took off (we were "first in line" on the runway according to our captain; of course, we were the only people at the airport!!), and we had a quick flight and nice touchdown at Logan, and were on the road shortly before 11pm. From there, we only had to stay awake (and hope the kids would sleep) until we got home. Yay.

So both ways it would have been faster to drive, and now we're seriously thinking about driving the next time, even though we hate driving long distances. Gah.