As an anxiety ridden person, we made it to the airport with 3 hours to spare. Slightly anxious drive from my work, after working a partial day, because my father-in-law was taking us there. Leaving the country for ten days, I did not want to leave my car in long-term parking in Portland.
The real anxiety comes at the airport in waves. Do I have my passport and ID? I checked five times on the drive up. Yes, I still did when we got to the airport. I was slightly distracted from what I had imagined would be awful getting through TSA because the airport was almost completely empty and I was looking for a llama. Earlier in the month I had discussed my trip and anxiety with my doctor who prescribed me a medication that would help keep my anxiety level lower and in telling him about my trip he mentioned that PDX sometimes has a visiting llama for people to see, Cesar the No Drama Llama. Unfortunately I did not find him. Since we had checked in for our flight on the app the night before and flying only with a carry-on and personal item each, we decided to skip checking in with our airline when first walking in. My biggest fear comes from getting through TSA so there was no stopping to check out the newly updated PDX, which was lovely really. The trees and architecture were great.
In January we decided to try and get TSA pre-check because it made me so anxious going through there every time. My husband got his within three days, mine a month and a half later. Those six weeks were not spent anxiously wondering about all the reasons why I would be turned down for pre-check. I came up with some good ones. Anyway, we made it through TSA screening no problem. Also no shoes to take off, no liquid bag to take out and show, and we breezed through with hardly anyone else in line. After checking to make sure my ID and passport were back in my bag again we headed for our gate. If you don’t see it first thing how do you know it’s there, that’s what my brain says. It was at the very end of the terminal, still there. We sat down for a few minutes and then decided to check out some shops and decide if we were hungry. Upon our return many more passengers on our flight had shown up. They called some names of people to come up to the desk, I worried they would call us up the and tell us we had to go home and never come back. Then our names were called, let panic ensue. By not stopping at our airline to check in we had missed the opportunity to have our passports validated by the airline. Did we have the ETA visa added, yes months ago of course. We went back to wait for our boarding call, someone had taken the seats we had been in. No worries we were going to be sitting for a long time anyway. Finally the plane started boarding 45 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave. We did wait for our boarding number to be called before going to the line. Is there going to be enough room for everyone’s bags in the overhead bins. There was but some people had their bags a further away from them. We were told it was a full flight so we waited for the third person in our row. They never came, sweet how lucky are we? The crew lead came over the loudspeaker or through our headphones because some of us were already trying to distract ourselves from the idea of takeoff. There was a passenger who decided last minute to not get in the flight and unfortunately they had checked a bag so they had to get it off the plane before we could leave, shouldn’t be too long. Forty-five-ish minutes later, captain comes on and says bag was found but now there was a new problem. Would there be five passengers from business class willing to downgrade to coach because the crew were going to go over there allowed working limit with the additional time that had been added by searching for a bag. Two hours later, some people had decided not to fly as well and a few passengers had given up what looked like very comfy seats so we could take off. More announcements about connecting flights, one gentleman was very upset because he would not be in Edinburgh when he wanted. The crew member assured him he would get there and apologized profusely (for something they had no control over). Shortly after a dark and rainy takeoff the cart came around with drinks and a packet of pretzels. I was glad I had packed snacks because we were not positive if we would get a meal. Then not too long after they served dinner, it was 11-something pm PST. It was delicious. Hubby had chicken and mashed potatoes. I had gnocchi with tomato sauce.
We each got headphones for our personal screen and watched movies, played games, or watched our flight in real time flying over the world. A couple of melatonin later and we were trying to sleep. I did sleep some but it was not restful. Every few minutes it felt like I was readjusting my body and my pillow. I did sleep for some time and woke up right before they started serving breakfast, which was a hot egg and cheese bagel. Within an hour we had landed at Heathrow airport in London England.
Let the next adventure begin.
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