Trip off to a rough start

Thanks to J for giving everyone a quick synopsis of the mishaps at the start of our trip. I'll try to finish up the tale...... so us and an almost full bus of folks, many of whom were re-routed to O'Hare due to the many cancellations at Mitchell, are sitting on side of I-94 in a very "dead" bus. No one can believe this is happening, especially all those folks from Mitchell, who already had to deal with lots of travel issues due to the "high wind warning" that hit our area. It took over an hour for the next bus, also full of travelers to reach us. The next 20 minutes were chaotic as all us had to transfer all of the luggage to the new bus. The problem was the bus was up against the guard rail in the emergency lane. We had to climb over the rail, and carry the luggage on the rough stone and uneven terrain and then heave it back over the guard rail and into the bus. We tried to hurry the process along as we all had flights to catch. You should have seen Jan - she was haulin' more luggage that the guys!!

So, we are now on our way with a full bus load of nervous and weary travelers. We hit the airport movin' pretty fast as our timeline was short. Fortunately, the American Airlines International line was short. As we are checking in, we find that Jan's travel visa was not submitted by the travel company. Again, very fortunate for us, we found out that Australia is the only country that allows the airlines to do an online visa. It ran us $25 bucks, but at this point we were just happy to have it completed. We now could pass through security, catch our breath and head to the gate to catch the overseas flight to Brisbane.

We are on our way!!!!