Time for Takeoff

It wasn’t until I started packing for our trip that I realized just how long we would be abroad. I had to consider the different activities we would be doing as well as the different weather we might experience when packing my clothes. A challenge I encountered was packing my hard hat and boots in my luggage. The size of these items (and the weight of my luggage) meant that a last minute change needed to be made before leaving for the airport. The hour before heading to the airport included taking items out of my luggage, packing items into my carry-on, and confirming the luggage weight with some help from my parents. This wasn’t the only last minute change made that day. My original travel plans were to depart Austin, TX, at 7:30pm and fly to San Francisco, CA. I had an hour and a half layover in San Francisco before my flight to Sydney, AUS. The morning of my flight, I got a text from the airline saying that my flight to San Francisco had been delayed by an hour and was scheduled to depart Austin at 8:30pm. This would cause me to miss the boarding window for my connecting flight to Sydney. After a long phone call with United Airlines customer service, my new flight plan was to fly from Austin to Houston with a three hour layover before departing for Sydney.