Oregon Trip: Getting Home (Day 6)

Thursday morning we left the house just after 6:30 in the morning to make the drive to Portland and catch the flight home. Scott slept most of the way in the car but I did not. Once we got to Portland we dropped off Julie and Landon. They met with his cousin to drive to Seattle for a family event. We got a little lost which really hurt us for time. We got to the airport with about thirty minutes until our plane was to leave but still had to return the van, check our bags, go through security and make it to our gate to board. We were optimistic but the line to check baggage was incredibly long. We ran to security and once through we sprinted to our gate but we missed the plane by seven minutes! We were able to change our tickets but the next flight wasn't for another four hours or so. We were supposed to go straight to work so we had to call someone to cover for us. Lucky he was available! During the wait we ate lunch and got ice cream, but it felt like we had been sitting there for ages.

Once we arrived in Salt Lake we met with my dad and went to find our bags. We didn't see them anywhere so we went to the office where they told us they had no idea where the bags were. We started to feel a little like Greg Focker in Meet the Parents. After requesting a claim we headed home and decided to stop for dinner (we were already late to work and we were famished!) at Texas Roadhouse. My dad and I had never been there and it was a treat for all of us. While at the restaurant we received a call from the airline letting us know our bags had just arrived from Denver (Denver?). They offered us a $50 travel credit to pick them up or said they would deliver them to our house for free. We would have taken the credit but Southwest doesn't service Des Moines. We asked them to deliver the bags and were told they would arrive that night. Great!

We got back to Orem and Scott went to a friend's house to watch the NBA finals while I went to work for a few hours. After getting through hundreds of emails I realized how tired I was, so I picked Scott up and we went home where we expected our bags. To our dismay they had not arrived, so I looked over our claim form. It said that we needed to sign the form and tape it to our door for them to leave the bags if we were not present to sign for them. We figured we missed the courier, but taped the note to the door anyway and went to bed. Just after 3:00 am Scott's phone rang. In our sleepy stupor we were confused, but quickly realized it might be the courier. Scott answered and the man said he had our bags but couldn't find the door (it is between the house and the garage, a little tricky). Scott explained where the door was and asked the man to leave them on the porch before going upstairs to bring them in. Expecting the man to be gone Scott didn't bother to put clothes on, so he was surprised to be standing outside in his underwear at 3:00 am meeting some guy. Awkward.

Long story short, the trip was better than planned! After working around 30 hours in two days we were absolutely beat. This morning we slept through alarms, phone calls, and sunshine through our windows because we were so tired! Now for the week ahead: moving out of our apartment.