Go West, Young Man but take a non-stop flight

We're enjoying our little break in Palm Springs. Until today, the weather has been unseasonably cool (65 degrees) which is fine by us since its sleeting in DC and quite cold. Sorry suckers. Our flight here was hell. We left at 3:30 on Saturday and thought we'd barely make the connecting flight in Dallas and luckily they held it for us, but after two and a half hours it began to get ridiculous. All the flights were inexplicably delayed, and we learned that the Dallas airport is so busy that one glitch can make the whole damn system tumble like a house of cards.

Finally at 8:30 or so they let us board but then we were forced to wait on the jetway for 15 minutes while, we found out later, the staff fixed a broken armrest. The jetway was freezing cold, like 30 degrees, and I thought Dallas was supposed to be warm?!

The actor Richard Dreyfuss had flown with us since DC (I couldn't talk to him because the only movies I remember are Jaws and Mr. Holland's Opus) and as Kaj and I boarded, Kaj dropped his plastic Tigger toy. He scrambled out of my arms and a man sitting across the aisle from Richard picked it up for Kaj and handed it to him. Kaj exclaimed, "Oh! Fank you, sir!" Everyone laughed. It was awesome.

However, the glow of pride was overshadowed by the fact that we were forced to linger on the tarmac for another hour and a half because we were 14th in line to get de-iced. By now it was like 11 pm Eastern to my body and I was so tired I wanted to cry. I kept falling asleep sitting straight up and then jerking awake as I fell forward. Finally the ice age was over, and we were allowed to take off. Kaj and I slept the whole flight and we got in to Palm Springs at 11 PST. Which is 2 am our time. Next time we'll opt for the non-stop. There's just no easy answer when you're flying across the country.