In November, three of my college friends and I bought tickets to NYC to surprise our friend, Molly, for her birthday. Molly knew my friend Rachel was coming up, but she had no idea about Caitlin, Katie, and myself!
On March 5th, I woke up super early after having worked until midnight the night before and drove to the airport in Kansas City. Caitlin, Katie, and I would be flying to St. Louis where Rachel would join us before boarding our flight to NYC.
The morning started off fairly smooth with our plane landing in St. Louis on time. We all bought some lunch and waited. If you remember, this was when NYC was getting some pretty severe winter weather. Cue the announcement at 10:30 that all flights to LaGuardia were cancelled due to a plane sliding off the runway. We all looked at each other panicked and booked it to the customer service desk. Thankfully, a wonderful man told us we would be better off exiting the secure area and going to the main check-in desk.
After waiting in line with other panicked fliers and calling everyone we knew trying to rebook, we made it to the desk and were able to talk to a customer service representative. Turns out we could get on a standby flight to Newark that evening, but it was a full flight and there were four people already on standby. No way were those four people plus us four getting to Newark that night. Her next option was to fly us out Saturday morning. Folks, our return flight was Sunday so this did not work.
We spend a good amount of time talking to this lady when she said, "did you fly in from Kansas City this morning?" Why yes, yes we did. She then said she could get us on a flight back to Kansas City at 9:00pm that night and then fly to LaGuardia in the morning with a connecting flight in Milwaukee. So began our adventures.
Since Rachel lives in St. Louis, she had a car at the airport. Not just any car, but a Mini Cooper. Y'all we managed to fit four of us and our four large suitcases and carry-ons in the Mini Cooper and drove around St. Louis.
The next day, we made it to Milwaukee and after a slight delay, we finally boarded our plane to NYC. Unfortunately, we lost a whole day of our trip, but we were able to make it in time to surprise Molly and attend her birthday dinner.
Overall, the surprise was a success!
