Let's try that again

Up at 5 to try once more to make it to Medford, OR, to celebrate my grandfather's 90th birthday and perform Views of the Manger for the church in which I grew up.

The lock's frozen, and no one mistook my car for their's the way that kind woman defrosted my lock in Tulsa.

Joyce's dad brought out an extention cord and a hair dryer. We're off.

Joyce's dad clued me in to a way to bypass the main security gates. Concourse A has it's own security. You just have to walk a bit further.

At Gate 51 I'm told it's been switched to Gate 26.

Gate 26 tells us we're on target for an on-time departure. I have a 50 minute layover in Portland, so things look good. And I've got in my excercise for the day.

I just overheard them say we're going to need to be de-iced. That takes 30 minutes. So make that a 20 minute layover with an airline and, probably, a concourse change.

Boarding time: no announcement.

Announcement: our crew just landed a different plane at the other end of the terminal. Now they're getting their excercise. They're still estimating an on-time landing in Portland. I like their math...for now.

Oh, that crew announcement was for a flight to Seattle. Our plane is unloading..

We're boarding.

It's snowing, but they're still talking about...oh, here we go. We'll have to de-ice.

Nope. Someone else is using our de-icer.

Flight time: 2:18. Flight to Medford leaves in: 3:17 min.

They're de-icing in short sleeves. In Tulsa they didn't have a cabin, so they were getting doused with back-spray. Flight to Medford leaves in: 2:49 min.

I just found out that we're landing in Concourse C and I'll need to get to Concouse A...in 31 minutes and counting. At least we don't seem to need to slip into a half-hour window to get our time on the runway like we did in Tulsa.

Pulling away from the de-icing station. Flight to Medford leaves in: 2:39 min.

Wheels up. Flight to Medford leaves in: 2:27 min. That leaves almost a half an hour to change concourses. No problem, but I'm still going to grab that seat closest to the door like I did, to no avail, last night.

We're coming into the Portland area. The captain said he's going to try to pick up some speed.

Touchdown. We're at the gate. Four min

Four minutes wasn't enough. They closed the flight ten minutes ago. Thankfully there's another flight out at 1:25.

Our flight's postponed because our plane is grounded in Seattle.

They've been released.

We're off the ground! Hurrah!

Touch down: 50 hours, 11 minutes late.