My Trip Home - With Some Whidbey Weirdness

I've been back home in New Jersey since the 12th and it was an interesting trip.

It all started with the Whidbey Sea-Tac shuttle. Mr. V had to work and couldn't drive me to the airport so I had to hop on the shuttle to get there since leaving my car at the airport would have been much more expensive. The shuttle is great, but slightly annoying in the fact that they won't allow you to book a shuttle that will get you to the airport less than 2 hours before your flight. I understand why they have this policy, but it would also be nice to just say "Hey I claim responsibility if I miss my own flight." So with this policy in place, I had to take a shuttle that left Oak Harbor at 8:15 and arrived at Sea-Tac at 10:30..for a 1:30 flight.

I was already pretty cranky, because if you know me, I'm not a morning person. I planned on attempting to take a nap on the way down to Seattle. But this is where I ran into some fun Whidbey Weirdness. When I got on the shuttle in Oak Harbor, about 5 other people also got on. One lady was saying goodbye to her son and another lady was alone. As soon as we got on, the lady who was alone started talking to the lady with the son:

Alone Lady: "Oh hi! It looks like you were saying goodbye to family. Were you just out here visiting?"

Lady with son: "Yes, my son just had heart surgery, so I came out here to help him through the surgery and recovery."

So far a pretty normal conversation, but this is where the lady, who was by herself, got really weird. She proceeds to start asking the lady with the son tons of questions:

Alone Lady: "Why is your son out here?"

Lady with Son: "He's in the Navy."

Alone Lady: "Oh can he stay in the Navy with a heart condition?"

Lady with Son: "Well he's not sure. He has to go to some follow up appointments before they decide if he needs to be medically discharged."

Still a normal conversation right? But it was at this point that the Alone Lady proceeds to burst into tears. And not just small tears. I mean full blown crying, gasping for breath tears. In between sobs and gasps she manages to get out something along the lines of:

"Oh your son is soooooo wonderful! *sob* It is SUCH a huge sacrifice to serve your country. *gasp* I thank God every single day for the people in our military *sob*." She proceeds to ramble on for at least 15 minutes crying and saying these exact same things over and over.

Now don't get me wrong. I am grateful for our military too and I understand the sacrifices made. Heck, I'm married to a guy in the Navy. But I have NEVER seen someone react like this to the military. I've seen people get choked up. I've seen people who are very grateful. But I have never once seen a person so hysterical that she can barely breathe as she thanks someone for their service. It was actually a little weird, and she sort of seemed a little unstable.

By this time the shuttle had reached Coupeville, where it made its next stop to pick up more people. At this point the crying lady desperately asked the shuttle driver if he can go into the convenience store at the gas station where the shuttle pickup was, to buy her some tissues. He looks at her like she's crazy and tells her that she can get out and buy tissues herself (he was nice about it), but eventually he gave in and got her the tissues.

After blowing her nose loudly, several times, the woman proceeded to cry some more and then launch into an explanation about her entire life. In betwen sobbing and gasping I learned that her husband had been in the Navy, but he got out after only a few years because she "just couldn't bear the separation". However, this apparently led to them not having a steady income and now they have no insurance...and her husband has back problems and her medical bills are $1000 a month...so if the heart guy is able to stay in the Navy then he should...in case his wife has large medical bills in the future...oh and to serve the country too. She was still crying hysterically at this point.

By this point the woman in the seat across the aisle from me was rolling her finger around her head making the crazy symbol and rolling her eyes. Then the lady behind me yelled at the top of her lungs (this lady had to be at least 70, if not older) "Excuse me sir?? What's the policy about cell phones on the shuttle?" He replied "You're welcome to use them, just please be considerate of other passengers." However, apparently she didn't want to use a cell phone, she just thought that the crying lady was on a cell phone. She proceeded to tell the driver that someone had been on a cell phone for the entire trip, and she was loud, and needed to quiet down. When the crying lady didn't quiet down, the old lady spent the rest of the ride sighing as loudly as possible.

We hadn't even reached the ferry yet and I was ready to shoot myself.

By the time we finally got to the airport I was thrilled to be out of that van. My plane boarded on time and I thought the annoyances of the day were over. But apparently these particular Delta employees missed kindergarten because they can't count. There were several people trying to fly stand-by and they let 5 of them onto this flight. But....there were only 4 empty seats. The flight attendent must have walked up and down the aisle 10 times, if not more, counting empty seats because she had one person who had nowhere to sit. I didn't realize that it was that hard to realize that there wasn't a single empty seat on the plane.

My luck continued though, because a guy, probably in his mid 30s, sat down next to me. He was a stand-by passenger and apparently he thought that he deserved to sit in first class First he called his wife while the flight attendents were trying to figure things out and ranted to her about how unfair it was that he couldn't sit in first class. I guess he missed the memo about the fact that stand-by means you take whatever seat you can get. When he hung up with his wife, he then proceeded to rant to me. Awesome. Thankfully, a flight attendent managed to switch him to first class, because she was cleary sick of his complaining, and a very nice, very quiet man, with a book and headphones, sat down next to me. He had been a stand-by passenger sitting in first class who thankfully agreed to move to any seat if it meant this other guy would stop complaining.

So FINALLY they figured out that this one woman just simply wouldn't fit on the plane so they had to take her off and tell her to wait for another available flight. By the time we took off, we were 20 minutes late! I was a little annoyed because I had a layover to make in Salt Lake City, and someone's inability to count or recognize that there are no empty seats almost made me miss my connecting flight.

Needless to say, my day wasn't off to a good start!

I'm happy to say though, that at this point, everything started going right and the rest of my trip was uneventful. I'll bore you all with info about it at a later time :-).

For now, I'm enjoying one last dinner with my grandparents before heading back to the Pacific Northwest tomorrow. (Do I really have to go back?? :-().