Day 366: The End

by Ted · Published January 5, 2020 · Updated February 28, 2020

The kids slept for most of our 5-hour flight from Lihue to LAX. Margaret and I were dozing on and off — I think I got around two hours of sleep. But we were so happy to actually be on the ground in LA, relief trumped exhaustion. I still can’t believe Delta shifted us to an American Airlines flight, allowing us to make our connection and avoiding a miserable Sunday / Monday after New Years travel marathon. See Margaret’s post from yesterday for more on this miracle.

We landed in LA around 6am PT — back in the continental US for the first time in 365 days. It was 6:45 by the time we got off the plane and we had to hustle to pickup our bags, walk to a different terminal, then check bags for our Delta flight to DC.

The automated check-in system didn’t work for us so we were directed to “Special Services” and had our bags checked and (TSA precheck) boarding passes in hand within minutes. We were in line to board our flight to DCA and I turned to Margaret and said, “I still can’t believe we’re getting on this flight.” Delta Airlines for the win.

Not only did we get on the plane but we learned that because of tailwinds, it would be just under four hours from LAX to DCA. Last night I was on the phone for an hour contemplating different flight plans that would have us maaaybe getting into Baltimore by midnight after another connection on oversold flights from Atlanta or Minneapolis and here we were, arriving in DC before 4pm.

Margaret read, dozed and wrote answers to some of the “FAQs” we’ve collected from Instagram. (Stay tuned for those.) Willa watched the first Harry Potter (for the second time) on the in-flight TV. James watched his iPad. I read for a bit then watched Harry Potter too — I’m on the third book now and wanted to see how they created some of the JK Rowling characters and scenes. To be honest, I got a little bored. Not sure if it’s because I knew the plot, because it’s a kids movie, because the acting isn’t very good, or because I just don’t have the patience for 2+ hour movies in general. Probably all of the above. I grabbed my iPad and starting writing this during the second half of the film.

And so here we are, on the initial descent into the same airport from which we flew to Miami, then on to Kingston, Jamaica on January 7th of 2019. That was flight number 1. This is flight number 79. In between we visited 90+ destinations in 29 countries across 6 continents.