I woke up early this morning (6:45 am) from excitement over the day's travel, I suppose. Barry seemed to be feeling pretty well, though still not 100%, and slept in a little later. He was able to eat most of a plain bagel at the HIX buffet, while I polished off some raisin bran, fruit, and peanut-butter raisin toast. Hopefully he'll be back to a normal diet soon. After breakfast and finishing our packing, we took off to return our rental car after topping off the tank with gas at $3.16/gallon for regular unleaded (up around .17/gallon since we were in Vegas two weeks ago!) Although the car was quite dirty from our forays down red-rock dust dirt roads and many bug splatters, we were not dinged for any damage. I guess they are used to it.
We were amazed to see what a zoo the Vegas airport was on a Sunday morning. No, this is not RDU! It had been quite busy when we arrived as well, but since that was late as night, it was less crowded than this morning. When we got to the kiosk to obtain our e-ticket, we were informed that our flight to Charlotte was delayed and that we might miss our connecting flight to RDU. Bad news! If this were to happen, we would have to take a backup flight to RDU leaving Charlotte at 9:45 pm (instead of 7:15), which would likely mean getting to our house around midnight. I am mostly concerned about how I will feel at work tomorrow with jet lag and getting to bed so late. My body is still operating on mountain time, so I am not likely to be as exhausted at midnight as I would normally be, but I might be too geared up to sleep. And getting up Monday morning is likely to be very challenging as 7 am will feel like 5 am to me. Ah, the joys of travel!
The next day (Monday, May 15): The rest of our travel day yesterday ended up being quite eventful. There were bad thunderstorms in NC, so our second flight, a 30-minute flight from Charlotte to RDU took an hour, since they had to route the flight path way up north to get around the worst of the storms. So, we landed around 8:30 pm instead of 8. When we finally landed, we found out there was a tornado watch, thunderstorm warnings, hail, and the like, here in NC. Because our first flight (Vegas -> Charlotte) was delayed for an hour due to mechanical issues, we arrived in Charlotte 8 minutes before our flight to Raleigh was to depart. We had to do an "Amazing Race" run from the end of Concourse B in Charlotte to the end of Concourse C (about a 1/2 mile distance) and made it onto the plane with only a couple of minutes to spare! Fortunately the flight had been delayed for 10 minutes, which probably allowed our luggage to make it onto the plane to RDU as well, so I have to give US Airways some credit for that, as we fully expected it would not make the plane. I heard on the local news last night that there were many flight delays in NC yesterday due to the bad weather.
And, to make the day even more fun (NOT!), I came down with Barry's stomach bug and was sick in the plane lavatory on our second flight. It came on so suddenly as I felt fine on the first flight and even during that crazy run for the second, but during the second flight started feeling really strange. At first I thought it was just from the adrenaline and stress of having to run to catch our flight, but before I knew it, I was shaking like a leaf and absolutely freezing. It didn't help that the temp was in the 50s and damp here, after leaving such hot temps in Vegas, but I did have a fever of over 101 when we finally got home at 9:45, then over 102 an hour later. When we got home, I didn't do anything but get under the covers and shiver. Tylenol helped, and I woke up with a fever of just 100, but I had a bad headache and felt incredibly woozy and sleepy, so I had to take a sick day from work. Now, in the afternoon, I am finally starting to feel better, so perhaps this is just a 24-hour bug - I hope!
Barry went to pick up Pepper from the kennel today and found out that she had been diagnosed with a sinus infection and is now on antibiotics. He actually had to pick her up at the vet next to the kennel, as she was over there getting an IV to boost her fluid levels, as she had been a bit dehydrated. She lost weight (2.5 lbs), but not as much as her last long kennel stay, and she seems quite energetic, is eating well, so I think she's on the road to recovery as well. Barry also seems to be mostly recovered from his bout with the stomach virus and is busy dealing with everything that needs done after a long trip.