The Barnums Off to Penguin-Land!!!

We are off on another trip!!!

Of course, it was a typical Barnum departure.  As the day of the flight neared, the weather worsened.  We knew that bad weather was a possibility, but had taken comfort from the early weather reports that said it was going to be the high 30's or low 40's.

They were wrong.

We were to fly out Monday morning, so it snowed and rained ice on Saturday which continued to Sunday.  Sunday morning, we received a helpful text message from American Airlines saying our flight had been cancelled, "if you need assistance, please call".  If we had had our own large jet to take to South America we would not have needed assistance, but I was short one large jet.

The lady on the telephone said no flights were leaving for Dallas, Texas (our first stop on the way to Buenos Aeries) on Monday and we had the choice of flying out of Seattle or waiting until Tuesday when a flight "might" be leaving Portland.  The word "might" caught our attention, so we decided to book the early morning flight from Seattle on Monday and figure out how to get to Seattle.

Cousin Ken had agreed to take care of the puppies while we were gone on this trip, the only problem was retrieving him from an icy hill.  That could wait until later, first to pick up a rental car from Hertz.

I walked through the snow, ice and slush through downtown to the local Hertz (the buses and Max were on "reduced" schedule - as in, could barely be seen).  There the initial question was "is this covered by insurance?" Apparently, 15 people had come ahead of me and all of them involved wrecks in the ice and snow with replacement rentals while their car was being repaired.  My thought was, "they're okay with us taking these rentals out?"  I normally pass on the collision-damage waiver.  This time I thought, what the hell, let Hertz fix anything.

I picked up the car, they had no 4-wheel drive SUVs or tanks, so I picked up the largest sedan they had - a Hyundai (I had been hoping for a Cadillac or a Lincoln).  I made it back to the Condo and transferred to the Explorer to pick up Cousin Ken.  The Explorer did just fine heading up the hill to get Cousin Ken and we made it back to the Condo where Karen and I finished packing, said a tearful goodbye to the puppies (they seemed fine, though Dolly was a bit concerned and was very needy with Karen before we left) and we were off!!  Well, almost off, first Karen said upon arriving at the garage, "you got a Hyundai?"  I think I said something like "Korea is lousy with snow".

The drive to Seattle was not too bad, considering the snow, ice, rain and poor visibility.

We arrived at the airport Hilton, settled Karen into the room and I took the Hyundai (still intact) back to Hertz, followed by a practice bus ride to the terminal, followed by a bus ride to the hotel.  My lovely bride asked me to bring up drinks from the bar on arrival (which I did) and had ordered up steak and wine from room service, so all was well.

We were ready to begin our trip!!!!