Continued from Barcelona Day 4 Part 2.

Stayed up late partying last night, wake up at 8:30am this morning and head to the airport.

How RL is feeling this morning. Too much fun last night. Hopefully she can hold it together for the trip to the airport.

Bye Barcelona, it’s been real.

The struggle is real. I, surprisingly enough, feel pretty fine. I’ve had my fair share of feeling hungover on travel days, but it is RL who is suffering today.

Subway, then connect to another subway that goes all the way to the airport. We had to buy a special airport only ticket for the subway.

Not too many people taking the subway to airport. It’s almost an hour by subway and I think maybe 40min by car? I am always just wary of cars to airport and being stuck in some random traffic.

Here, that’s not too bad of a ride.

No bags to check, straight to security. They did not have some stupid 20x20cm clear bag policy like they had in London. Went right through security and I didn’t even have to throw a belt.

Must have coffee.

Boarding right on time, this is good. We’ll need to catch a connection in New York.

Feeling a little bit better after coffee.

I like the little wheels for the hose.

Didn’t know when we would eat on the plane and already hungry now, so got a jamon sandwich at the deli inside airport.

My face says it all, it was just ok.

We did upgrade our seats for this leg of the trip, economy plus!!!

Goodbye perfectly blue skies.

Was asked if I would like a single or a double, a double of course. RL passed on having any drinks.

We were the last row of economy plus, so by the time they got to us, they ran out of chicken. I guess vegetarian curry it is then.

Movie time.

Second meal. I don’t even know what I’m eating here. Some sort of nice noodle? It was actually quite refreshing to eat.

Long Island. Look, the sky just doesn’t look as blue over here.

I wonder why the plane took this route through Long Island. If I were to guess, it’s to avoid flying over the more rich neighborhoods in the Hamptons.

Got off and in immigration, we got into this mess. Tons and tons and tons of people in line. The super crowded line is for non citizens.

The citizens line had maybe 1/30th of the people as the non citizens line. That sucks for them, I can see so many people missing their connecting flights. What an inefficient mess and understaffing.

Still a lot of time here for us since we were able to use the short citizens line.

Hungry, jetlagged, tired. I guess it’ll just have to be this $17 mediocre sandwich.

Oh wait, apparently we’ve got more time. Our flight got delayed for an hour due to storms in Austin. This means we’ve got time to sit and eat at a restaurant.

This is what happened to my phone when I turned it on right after landing in JFK. WTF!!! I tried restarting and reconnecting to network, update network and nothing would work. RL’s phone worked just fine. I could make calls but my data would not work. Finally just ended up calling Verizon on RL’s phone and was on the phone with them for 30min. They assigned me a new eSim over the air and it seemed to have resolved the issue. What a mess, good thing it happened here in US and not while I was overseas.

Mediocre airport food just to tie us over.

Finally boarding, can’t wait to get back to Austin.

A busy time to take off, we waited in that long line. About to take off now…or so we thought.

We lined up on the runway, the captain rolled on the power, and in about 1 second, he rolled off the power. Fuck, something bad happened. We pulled off to the side of the taxiway and the captain came on the speaker saying that the airplane threw a fault code of some sort when they put the power on. They’ll try to resolve the issue in the cockpit and see if we can take off. Of course, after a bit of them, they said that they can’t resolve it so we’ll need to go back to gate for maintenance crew.

Back at gate waiting for maintenance crew to show up. I did notice that at the gate luggage slide, instead of a bespoke slide, they just cut a giant drainage pipe in half. Finally the maintenance crew came on the plane, and ended up resetting the system. They couldn’t find out what actually caused the fault, but it did not come back after reset….which for them is good enough. Let’s hope so…

After another 2 hours of delay due to airplane issue, we are trying to take off again.

Success!!

While on the way to Austin. RL started getting horrible leg nerve pain. We tried everything and nothing seemed to help until finally as a last ditch, I suggested that she sit on her neck pillow to see if she can releave pressure on her legs one side at a time. Finally that did the trick and made it just barely manageable for her.

It was a bumpy ride at times on the way to Austin. There’s a huge storm system all over the middle of America and as we descended down into the clouds at Austin, we could see lightening flashing everywhere. Then we saw the heavy rain once we got under the clouds and I was surprised they allowed us to land in this weather.

It’s just raining cats and dogs over here. Constant lightening. The Captain said that we got to land, the plane ahead of us got to land, but everything coming in after that had to be diverted. We were just counting out lucky blessings that we didn’t need to get diverted when the Captain mentioned that we’ll be on the tarmac for a while since they can’t let the ground crew out while there’s lightening. In order for ground crew to be cleared to come out and direct the plane in, there needs to be no lightening strike for 10min in a 3 mile radius.

And so we sat on the tarmac and waited and waited and waited. We’d count, and then always another lightening would strike and we’d start over again. Everyone inside the plane was getting antsy, it was hot, the entertainment wasn’t on. It’s been a long and exhausting travel day, all we want to do is get out and go home. Finally, two and a half hours of sitting on the tarmac, we were finally able to approach a gate and disembark. What a shit show.

The luggage area is still filled with people from other flights waiting for their luggage. They’ve been waiting for probably close to 4 hours since the lightening began. Some of the planes landed and disembarked, but the luggage didn’t have time to get off before the lightening came. Sucks.

We called an Uber at the airport and when our Uber showed up, the guy was blasting music so loudly that other people waiting for their Uber just laughed as we walked up to our Uber. Good thing our driver turned down his music soon after he parked, thankfully. We were supposed to get in at 8:30pm to Austin, but due to all the various delays, we didn’t get back to our house until past 2:30am. That’s a long fucking travel day, so happy to be home. Took a shower and laid in my own comfortable bed, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.