The trip back from St. Louis was a little more eventful than the trip out. I still didn't have any trouble making it thru security, which was rather odd.
After sitting at the gate for a while, I looked up and saw that my 1:30 flight had been pushed back to 2:19. With an hour layover in Detroit, I would be pushing my luck to make the connection. I called and left a message for WS that I may or may not make my connection (I assume he was out riding with Jimmy as his rain gear is hung up to dry). The attendants at the gate gave those of us with tight schedules the numbers/times of the next flights, and tentatively scheduled us for those flights, so we would be prepared if we missed our connections.
The plane finally made it to the gate, disgorged its passengers and a full complement of passengers boarded. At this point, I was thinking that it may just be possible to catch my flight, if I hustled and the gate wasn't too far from where I got off.
We started backing away from the gate when we stopped moving and the captain cut the engines. He came on the intercom and announced that one of our lights had lost its lens cap and we would have to wait for a mechanic and parts to replace it. At this point I called WS and left a message that I would definitely not be making my connection and not to wait up for me.
Eventually we got the lens cap replaced and were on our way. The rest went pretty much as I had assumed - the plane from St. Louis landed about the time the plane for Manchester was taking off. I had about 3 hours to kill so I found some food and settled in for the long haul.
I did manage to walk the entire length of Concourse A as they first had my plane leaving from Gate A72 (I came in on gate 10 or something). When I got about 1/4 of the way there, they changed it to Gate A74. By the time I was half way there, they had changed to gate A11. I kept going to see what my eating options were and ended up eating somewhere around gate A64 (after I had walked all the way to Gate A74, just for the exercise). Concourse A is a mile long, so I got in about a 2 mile hike while I was waiting (after all the food I ate while in St. Louis, I really should have hiked it a couple more times).
I caught the later flight to Manchester, which was uneventful. I got home about 12:30 this morning. Currently I am in damage control mode - I've unpacked and have laundry going, will soon vacuum and perform other domestic duties that didn't get done while I was gone and WS was putting in massive hours on the weekdays and Saturday (I had ordered Jimmy to take WS for a ride on Sunday so I already knew none of that stuff would get done).
Then I will go check out the gardens. WS kept a running tally of the rain we recieved while I was gone - just under 3.5". With the rain we got last Friday thru Wednesday, we've goten over 6" of rain. From the kitchen window it looks like the vegetable garden really enjoyed it. It will take a closer inspection to see if the slugs are having a party in there. Maybe, if I got lucky, the Japanese Beetles all drowned. WEll, I can always dream about it anyway.
I'll talk to y'all next weekend - be good!
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