After what was a pleasantly civilized trip thru airport security (no stripping! no removing things to place in separate bins!), our luck ran out at the gate. A group of us were all flying JetBlue from Boston to San Jose, and we schmoozed for a while – not noticing that HEY OUR PLANE ISN’T HERE YET. Turns out it was delayed, probably due to lines of thunderstorms, and we didn’t get out until about an hour past our scheduled departure. We also learned there was no wifi on our plane. The one carrying bloggers. To a conference for bloggers. Oh irony…

Once in the air, we enjoyed the movies (“Captain America: Winter Soldier” and “Grand Budapest Hotel” for me and my friend), but not long after our second flick finished we were told we were on approach to Salt Lake City. Um…what? Turns out that we had been diverted around those same storms – sent up as far north as Maine and central Vermont! – and we were running low on fuel. We landed in SLC, spent a short time on the tarmac and headed out as soon as we were fueled up.

By this time, we had already lost one hour to the storms – and now we lost time to the fill-up. Sometime around 11pm local time (almost 2hrs late), we groggily wandered off the plane into the surprising vastness that is the San Jose airport. Cabs were procured, and – thanks to my Marriott app the nice Rewards people recommended – our keys and two bottles of water were waiting for us at the front desk.

The view may be lovely – hard to tell at night – and it was a slog…but we are here, so I’m just happy to be able to say that we have made it. I didn’t expect red eye flights in both directions (not my preference), so here’s hoping the return trip goes more smoothly. [FWIW, it could be worse. The folks waiting for the return flight to Boston were waiting all this time for us to come in, so they could equipment, and the flight attendants were filling up the flight with passengers and heading right on back with them, working two long flights in a row. They were a chipper bunch. Hope they got some sleep.]