Saturday's Experience

Nathan was unable to post this last night due to SLOW internet speed in Mississippi. He was finally able to email it to me tonight.

"Well it is about 12:52 Central time, on Saturday. We're all here and we've all made it safely to Lakeshore, Ms.

I do have pictures, but this computer I'm on won't upload them. So I'll try sending them to my mom on our home computer to see if she will upload them there.

At 6 am , in the dark, we all left on time from San Jose . The flight was approx 1-2 hours to Salt Lake City , Utah and uneventful, until we got ready for our descent. When we began our descent, the pilot announced we wouldn't land for at least an hour because they were de-icing the runway. After at least another 30 min, our pilot said we were going to Twin Falls , Idaho , and wait there until the runway in Salt Lake was clear. But as soon as we started to turn around, within a minute the Pilot announced we were cleared to land. But boy, it sure was snowy in Utah compared to California ! :D It must have been freezing or maybe even a little below.

As we were taxing into around , waiting to stop, there were trucks with huge booms on them with little cockpits that were spraying steam, or hot water onto the fuselage and wings of the planes to get all the ice off of them.

Once we got into the airport we literally had to run to make our next flight. But once we got onto the plane we sat there for at least an hour while they were de-icing our plane. But it was neat watching them do that. After we took off, our flight made good time to Atlanta . But even though we were early, we missed our flight to Biloxi , MS. So we all sat in the airport waiting for the next flight to Biloxi . During that time we all prayed we could make to MS by the end of that day. Our prayers were answered! In the end there were six empty seats on the next flight out, and there were seven of us in our group. So, Jim Mackanic stayed behind. When the six of us got on we waited at least an hour because they were having trouble with the radios between the pilot and the maintenance crew. But once we took off, other than a little turbulence, the rest of our flight was fine.

After waiting for around 5:30 -6 hours (lots of waiting today) the whole group, INCLUDING JIM, made it on a flight here, and landed around 11:45 .

So in the end it was a long day, but we were glad to have all made it safely and together."