It wouldn't be a vacation without kaos

Air travel from Redding is never easy. Our local airport does not serve most destinations, so if air travel is on your agenda, the choice is Sacramento or the bay area for airports. For a 6am flight from Sacramento to Dallas the guys and I left the house at 2 am. I drove through the 24 hour coffee house and mainlined some caffeine so I would not drift off the road. It is surprising how much life is happening at 2 am on highway 5. Construction delays were not part of my preparation plan. The tickets said boarding at 5:30 am. We arrived at the airport at 5:22am. Cutting it a little close. I still had to park the car and hop on the tram to take us to the gate. Luck was on our side and we caught a tram within a minute. Awesome 5:23! I think we can make it! I told the guys that we were in hustle mode, you see, if we missed this flight then my mothers great planning of my family and my sister all meeting at DFW at the same time would be shot. We were dropped off at the American terminal at 5:30. We can do this! Got through a curiously short security line to have the TSA agent tell me that we were at the wrong terminal. Apparently some, not all, American flights fly out of the American terminal. My flight flew out of the Delta terminal. Who knew! Back to serious hustle mode we high tailed it to the other terminal to be greeted by a security line that looked about a mile long. I wondered if for only this morning the pilots would wait for everyone to get to their gates before leaving, sort of like a long line at the movie theatre. Nope. The lady in front of us laughed at me when I kept reassuring the guys that we were going to make it. We zipped through security and lucky us the gate was the one closest to security. We did it! Only one problem. No food for the guys. In our haste we did not have time to grab something before getting on the plane, and we left the house without provisions. It was 2 am after all! So two hungry guys and a three hour flight what could go wrong? Well, nothing on this flight. But we still have the RETURN flight!