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Saturday, May 11, 2013

Chicago: Background & Day 1 Travel

Here is a little background on why and how we were making our Chicago trip happen:

My brother, Ryan, moved to Chicago back in 2009 and has loved living in this city. I mean, it can't be hard to love a city when you live smack in the heart of it! (He is 2 blocks from Michigan Avenue and right across from the Trump International Tower). Once Luke and I got married in the summer of 2010 Ryan had been asking when we were going to come visit. We always wanted to visit but we didn't think it would take us years to make it here! 

Ryan's girlfriend, Michelle, moved out here in October of last year and we had been constantly talking about how Luke and I need to finally get out to Chicago. We needed to plan a trip and we thought "how fun would it be to just surprise Ryan?" Ryan had actually surprised Michelle with coordinating a few of her girlfriends to fly out to the Windy City for her birthday right after she moved. 

So, we planned a surprise trip to Chicago for May! It was perfect timing as our busy work season would be slowing down and Ryan's birthday is in May. We lucked out and got the cheapest flights out here that I had seen in a LONG time (I always kept my eye out for cheap airfare). We were busy planning how we would actually surprise him with showing up. Maybe meet him at a restaurant? Be hiding in his apartment when he got home from work? Pretend like we ran into him on the street? I was pretty excited to actually pull off this big of a surprise! 

Michelle, Luke and I kept it a secret for about 2 months and then....we had to spill the beans. Ryan got asked to go to a conference for work in NYC the same week we had planned to come! We knew we had to tell him so maybe he could coordinate that he would at least be back for the weekend we were in Chicago. All and all it worked out! His flight home from NYC got him into Chicago in time for dinner on Friday and then we had the whole weekend with him here.

Okay, so since the back story is now out of the way, let's get to the beginning of Day 1 of our trip.

Our flight was suppose to take off from SFO at 9:30am on Wednesday morning which meant we needed to leave Modesto between 5 and 5:30am. The drive should typically take around 1 hour and 45 minutes but you never know what traffic will be like in the bay area, especially during the morning commute. We had planned to park our car at an off site airport lot that is half the cost daily of the SFO long term parking. It was only 1.5 miles from SFO and they had a shuttle that came every 20 minutes. Now, it is very very typical for flights to be delayed arriving and departing from SFO due to all the bay area fog. Of course, our flight was perfectly on time which would have been great if we didn't hit some of the worst traffic on the San Mateo Bridge.

We had smooth sailing right up until the tolls at the bridge and then dead stopped. We knew something had to be wrong to stop all 3 lanes from moving at all. I think we sat on the bridge for over 30 or 40 minutes barely crawling at all. Well, there had been a pretty big accident in the right hand lane and by the time we got up to where it took place, they were still working on getting the injured into ambulances. I said a little prayer for all those involved and was like "COME ON WE NEED TO GET TO THE AIRPORT!!!!" 

We completely decided to forgo the cheaper parking lot and just park our car in the long term lot at SFO (faster and more consistent shuttles). Our flight was suppose to start boarding at 8:50am and at 8:25am we were just getting onto the parking lot shuttle to take us to the terminal. I was freaking out a little about missing our flight at this point. We had no idea how long checking my bag would take or how long security would be. I am usually the type to get to an airport at least an hour and a half early if not more. Thank goodness we were able to check our bag right away and I asked a lady at the beginning of the security checkpoint line if there was any way we could jump ahead of people since our flight was now boarding! She was nice and let us cut like half way through the line. By the time we got through the security (of course they had to search Luke's backpack) it was already 9:10. We FLEW through the terminal. Running so fast and I was getting sweaty. At one point a little boy saw us running and said to his dad "Where are they going?" and the dad looked at me with a smile and said "They are in a hurry!" haha I sort of laughed at that and just prayed that we would make it!

WE DID! We were like 3rd to last people on the flight. Apart from actually missing a flight and all the hassle that would create, I had called the airline during our shuttle ride to the terminal seeing about change fees for missing flights and I was informed that if we completely missed our flight and didn't opt to change flights before our original one took off, we would have to buy all new tickets. So we had three options: 1. pray we make out flight 2. decide we didn't want to risk it and pay the $150 change fee to get on a flight an hour later 3. risk it and pray we get on our flight, then miss it and pay $900 for new tickets. I was freaking out a little. Honestly, if we had missed our flights without already changing to a different flight, we would have just turned around and drove home.

Up next...Day 1 in Chicago :)