Returned Safely
For those of you not on Facebook, you will know that the family and I successfully returned from a trip to the great white Northeast. We traveled to NJ to attend my niece’s Bat Mitzvah and to get together for Hamburger Hanukkah. Well, our trip started out kinda rocky, as our flight was quite delayed. Suffice it to say, we expected to get to my Mom’s house around 10:30 or 11p and we ended up getting there around 1a.
We awoke, much to the amusement of my 6-year-old daughter, to a light dusting of snow. Little did we know that this was the beginning of a historic snowfall for December. By mid-morning, we received a call from my sister to let us know that the Bat Mitzvah was moved up from 5p to 1p. As the hours ticked by, the snow piled up; however, we braved the weather in our rental car and got to the synagogue on time. The Bat Mitzvah went wonderfully; my niece was great.
We returned to my sisters house for the celebration (noting that the snow was continuing to pile up). After a wonderful celebration, however, we decided it was time to head home. My mom started out ahead of us and had some trouble with her truck, but we both eventually made it to her driveway. Mom’s driveway is about a mile long of narrow, windy road. It had snowed about 14″ by the time we were driving along and while my Mom’s truck had sufficient clearance, our rental car did not. After about 50 yards, the rental car began to act like a snowplow and the pile of snow in front of the car prevented any further forward momentum. We were stuck. (Oh and on Saturday evening, our Sunday afternoon flight had been canceled.)
The driveway didn’t get plowed until late Sunday afternoon and, needless to say, the Merle Hamburger’s missed the fun of Hamburger Hanukkah. We also found out late Sunday afternoon that USAir could not get us confirmed onto another flight until Tuesday afternoon. Thus, we were able to hang out with Mom for a while longer (which is amusing, as Mom is coming down to Atlanta the day after Christmas). We were able to negotiate delayed flights and flight plan delays out of Atlanta and arrived home (after a quick stop for dinner) around 9:30p. And then we collapsed.
I am glad we got to be there for my Niece’s Bat Mitzvah. I am disappointed that we weren’t there for Hamburger Hanukkah, but we largely got to see everyone at the Bat Mitzvah celebration, so it wasn’t a total loss. HOWEVER, this is yet another, in a long string of holiday travel nightmares, that reinforces my belief that my family and I should simply NOT travel in the month of December (and probably into January).
Thank you for checking in with me. As I said, I will be updating this blog more frequently for a while.
Cheers,
Merle