Reykjavik weather: Hi 54F, Rainy and Windy

Houston weather: Hi 90F, Afternoon Storms

And just like that, we were headed to the airport to fly home. We’ve seen and experienced so much on this trip and the last few days have been jam packed. But, of course, we must have one final adventure on the return trip, right?

Reykjavik airport is very nice and larger than I expected. Our flight was for Noon, so we wanted to be at the airport 3 hours beforehand. We’d heard that the lines to check-in could be long and slow and didn’t want to take any chances, so we requested a taxi to pick us up at 8am for the 45-minute drive to Keflavik International Airport. Traffic was light on this rainy and windy Saturday morning, and our cab driver might have exceeded the speed limit quite a bit as we arrived around 8:30am! Because the fares from Reykjavik to Keflavik are fixed, I think he was in a hurry to get there to pick up passengers just arriving for the return to town. There was no line to check-in – in fact, the counter wasn’t even opening until 9am for our flight, so we were first in line. However, as we reviewed the Keflavik schedule, there were probably 10-15 international flights which left between 7am-10am. I suspect there were some lines for those! Only Keith and Paula’s Delta flight leaving for NY-JFK at 11:15am and our United flight leaving for Chicago O’Hare at Noon were left on the schedule until late afternoon. Our gates ended up being adjacent, so we got some last conversations and hugs in with Keith and Paula before they were called to start boarding.

As we were sitting on the runway awaiting clearance to take-off, you could see the rain being blown almost horizontal by the wind and feel the wind buffeting the plane. We discussed again how fortunate we were with the weather overall on this trip and how we wished to see some of the rain back in Texas!

During the leg to Chicago, the Baylor football game began, and we received text updates from friends at the game as to the status. Just before half-time there was a lightning delay which stretched into a 2-hour delay. It was Alumni Band Day and I had many friends participating in the annual event who were extremely disappointed when the entire half-time ended up being cancelled! As we approached Chicago, we received the gate info for our connection to Houston and a message that said it would take 88 minutes from our arrival gate to get there! Yikes! Our original flights had about a 2.5-hour layover, but our flight to Houston got its time moved earlier after we booked such that officially we only had about 2 hours. Add in that we had to pick up our bags, clear customs, and recheck our bags, then go through security again and we started getting a little worried about making our flight. When we looked at the terminal map, we were going to have to go from almost the end of the international terminal to the far end of the furthest terminal!

It took forever to get our bags, so much for having a priority sticker – they didn’t come off anywhere near the first bags. I don’t know if that was a problem initiated in Reykjavik when they loaded the bags or in Chicago when they unloaded. We have Global Entry, so clearing customs was superfast, then we went to drop our bags for the transfer to our flight. At this point we were down to about 30 minutes until the doors were supposed to close on our plane and we told the agent we didn’t think we’d make our flight and asked if we could change to a later one. She said we still had plenty of time to get to our gate, we were doubtful, but off we ran – okay, walked faster than I’ve walked in a very long time! We got on the tram and Dave was talking to a pilot verifying that we were headed to the correct terminal, we had no time to waste! The pilot told us to follow him and get off at Terminal 2 as the security line there is always shorter than in Terminal 1 (our destination). Then it is a short walk to Terminal 1. He was right – short security line maybe 3-4 people in front of us and it was then a short walk to Terminal 1…. Except we still had to go to the far end of Terminal 1 to our gate! We were both breathing hard as we approached the gate and saw the door to the ramp to our plane still open. We scanned our boarding passes and were hurrying down the ramp when we turned the corner and ran into the end of the line of passengers still boarding. Yay! We made it! As we approached the entrance to the plane about two minutes before the scheduled door closing time, I got an alert on my phone – our flight had been delayed! NOW, they tell us!

Guess what the delay was? A ground stop in Houston which was due to the storm which had moved through Waco earlier delaying the Baylor football game and was now impacting Houston! Hallelujah! That meant we were getting some decent rain at home (fingers crossed)! We weren’t even the last on the plane as they actually shut and re-opened the door twice to allow more passengers to board during the ground stop delay. I think that delay also enabled our bags to make it onto the plane. Once again everything seemed to work out fine in the end – except for my shin splints, but those will go away in a few days!

Our pre-arranged driver was waiting for us at baggage claim, and we were home by 8:30pm (or 1:30am Iceland time!). We normally drive ourselves and park, but with the length of this trip it worked out to be cost effective to use a door-to-door service.

I’ll take a few more days to decompress and put everything into perspective before I do a final wrap-up on this trip.