My daughter and family from West Seattle have a wedding to attend in Florida tomorrow. 

She just called from Dallas. Or Houston. (They’ve been in both airports today.)

Their flight took nine hours from SeaTac, negotiating big Texas storms, circling endlessly before landing at each airport.

Their family is #37 on standby for the only Alaska flight going to Florida tonight.   

Two more flights scheduled tomorrow morning are full. The airport is full, too, as the storms caused hundreds of travelers to miss connections. 

Little Adam, who has flown several times in his first year, took three naps on the plane, never fussed once and is doing fine. His mother is down to four diapers and one outfit for her baby. 

Their suitcases? No idea. They plan to wait it out, aware that they may be too late for the wedding, hoping not to miss the reception.

Hearing her story, I flashed back 12 years to my flight to Nepal to go trekking. 

Multiple flights, really, with an occasional night of rest between them:  From SeaTac to Tokyo to Bangkok to Kathmandu to Pokara, Nepal.

That last flight was on Air Buddha, by the way, an airline I found most engaging, until at the end of the flight, I began peering out from the plane at the earth below, searching for any hint of a landing strip. 

Nope, only a lot of villagers lined up along the fence to watch the plane come bumping in, which it safely did. We 14 women stumbled wearily off the plane, smiling, calling “Namaste” to the villagers.  Led into a little building with a long table, we sat on benches.

The floor was cut totally away under the table and coals glowed deep in a pit beneath to warm our feet.  Wide-eyed, we drank cups of hot tea, put on our jackets, picked up our walking sticks and began our trek.

My daughter’s lament from Texas reminded me of our stop in Bangkok, on the way to Nepal. 

We arrived late at night. Our flight was the next morning, and we were on our own to find some rest, after our leader gave us one important instruction:  Do NOT follow signs for entry into Bangkok.  You are NOT going to Bangkok right now. You are in transit, and you must NOT officially enter the country. Got it? We got it.

Moments later, three of us blundered into walking directly under the signs proclaiming entry into Bangkok, Thailand!  Uniformed customs officers met us, took our passports and stamped them.  We soon discovered that it’s difficult to leave when the customs people know that you have just arrived!

After resolving that issue, we three looked for a quiet space to rest.  I spent the night sleeping on the floor, on pages of a foreign Wall Street Journal, with my head on my backpack. 

Right now, I wish my daughter Lisa had that backpack, stuffed with baby supplies, in the foreign land of Texas.