The Maximum Vacation, Part IX

Day 8 – evening

Later we went out to eat and did some clothes shopping. Pennsylvania has no sales tax on clothing, so we took advantage of that, given that in some locales in the South, people pay around 10 percent in sales tax on everything.
Here, Jadyn sports a set of sunglasses Mommy got her during our whirlwind shopping trip in the humongous Tanger Outlet Center.

Day 9

We got up, packed up and directed our car toward our first stop of the trip – our friends’ house – to drop off a borrowed item and wave one last time goodbye.
We checked out a few of the places of importance to Amanda and her side of the family in the area she grew up in, then pulled out the directions for the car rental office at the Philadelphia airport.
We turned in our car, got inside the airport and did all the necessary check-in stuff. We got aboard the plane with the plan of getting to Memphis – and then Birmingham – in just a few hours.
This plan didn’t materialize.
Our plane started to taxi out, but the air crew realized that a panel was open on the aircraft. So, we went back to the gate to have it shut. Then, several passengers wanted to get off the aircraft because they knew they would miss their connections in Memphis.
While we waited on them to decide what they wanted to do, we burned fuel, so we had to get more gas.
What started out as a planned two-hour flight to Memphis ended in the reality of us staying on the aircraft a total of four hours. When we arrived in Memphis, our plane to Birmingham had already been gone about 20 minutes. Outbound flights were done for the day.
We didn’t make it home the night of Day 9 like we’d hoped we would. Instead we stayed in a hotel – paid for, of course, by the airline responsible for the delay.

Day 10

We made it back to the Memphis airport in decent time to catch our flight to Birmingham, which arrived without any glitches. Seeing the family vehicle waiting in the parking deck at BIA was quite a welcome sight. We loaded up and started our already delayed journey back to Mississippi.
Our delay gave us an opportunity to interact with people we wouldn’t have gotten to know better otherwise, including a person we initially met in Philadelphia. We never completely know why something happens, we can only trust it was for someone’s benefit.
We got home with about 90 minutes to spare before Amanda went to a previously scheduled event and have been pretty much on the go since.

Epilogue

Our journey into the Northern United States helped us remember some of the more important things in life. These all involve relationship – with friends, family and community. Sometimes, the bonds of trust and togetherness are forged in a flash; trust comes immediately to engage what lies ahead.
Other times, they come into being by reconnection, taking extended amounts of time simply to sit and chat in a day and age when time seems impossible to find.
Spending quality time with friends and family is no waste of time.
Neither is extending a hand of friendship and support to a stranger you wind up stuck with on a layover at a hotel.
All of these things come by making a choice – and we’re glad we chose to take the Maximum Vacation of 2008.