No Tan Lines

My Prince gave me two time options for hailing our cab. 5:15 or 5:30. I chose 5:30 thinking surely he wouldn't give me any unreasonable options.

He silently cringed from afar (South Texas) and booked the cab. Our flight was scheduled to leave ATX at 6:35. 

When we arrived at the airport our sleepy excitement turned to concern. It appeared every (mother ducking) high school kid in Austin was standing in front of us in the security line. Literally 300 kids and their band instruments standing between us and paradise.

In fact, the Delta kiosk told us we were too late to check in. Vacation doomed... 

A Delta employee named Kasey checked us in manually, grabbed our bags from us and wished us luck. Our plane was boarding in 20 minutes and we were looking at a 2 hour security line. 

Chase looked around and jumped into the TSA pre-screen line. I stubbornly refused to join him, standing in the regular ol' plebeian line until he called me on the phone. He pleaded with me in front of all 300 people. He said that if we didn't attempt to cut to the front of that line with pre-screen, we were ABSOLUTELY NOT going to make Mexico. Kasey had already told us all of Delta's connecting flights were booked completely full, so missing our first flight meant missing Vacation Day 1 and missing our massages he had scheduled for the morning of Day 2.

Tragic shit man. I realized he was right. Worst case scenario we were going to get kicked out of the pre-screen line and we would still miss our flight, so I joined him and held my breath.

The TSA security lady was scary as hell. I knew she could smell my fear. I thought we had pulled a quick one over on her until she stamped our boarding passes and pointed a finger across the way. She was letting us cut the long line. She wouldn't however let us through the true pre-screen line without going through a scanner. 

5 excruciating minutes later we were totally through security and bolting down the terminal. After passing the first 5 gates I was thinking, "Thank God I work out on the regular." After passing the next five gates I was thinking, "Holy hell. (Gasping for air.) I should consider running more sprints." 

As the gap between us was growing, I kind of wondered if Prince Charming hadn't bumped my at the starting line. My mind wanted to find any excuse for my somewhat poor performance. But let's be serious. He has legs like a GD gazelle. We'll chock it up to those amazing legs and his sheer determination of will. Don't mess with that man's vacation. 

We arrived huffing at our terminal to find Kasey, all the way from Delta's check in counter, waiting for us. Just like a creepy butler from a funny movie. 

He kind of shook his head in surprise as if to say, "I didn't really think I would see you here." 

He told us the Prince's bag got tagged in security so it was slower moving through. He hoped it would make it on time, but if not they would forward it to our final destination. 

We shrugged our shoulders and wondered what could have caused the delay as we waited for our screaming adrenaline levels to drop from "Holy fuck, I'm having a stroke" to "We made it to Mexico, bitches!"

And then we vacationed happily ever after and all luggage was accounted for. The end.

EPILOGUE:

Best massage of my life. Super grateful we didn't miss it :)

We still have no idea why "his" bag got tagged. I just assumed little Bella dog had stowed herself away. 

Well actually, I might have a pretty good idea... When we unpacked it was apparent that it had been MY suitcase that had been searched. And that's another story for a different day, on an anonymous blog. 

The end.