Pulling a Jennie

So, I should probably explain something. My husband hates planning the travel itinerary. After hearing him complain about it, I finally told him one day that he should let me do it–since I LOVE it…no sarcasm there…I really do love putting together a good travel itinerary and looking for the best flight deals. After not much thought, he agreed.

I was on a running streak of about 2 years with no incident–then it happened. It all started when my husband found out he had to go to Minneapolis for a week of work. He was, of course, happy to hear that it was a city with a big airport, so it would be fairly easy to get a flight in and out of there. A few days later he found out that, while yes he was going to be in Minnesota, he would actually be about 5 hours north of Minneapolis in a small town called Thief River Falls. So, I feverishly set to the task of finding the shortest flights for him.

I was very grateful to see that Thief River Falls, although small–OK, small is an overstatement, according to Google, it has a grand total of 8,716 people there–they had an airport. So, because he only worked Monday through Thursday, I wanted to try to get him home Thursday night instead of have him spend all day Friday flying home. I found him a great flight which left Thief River Falls around 6:30, got into Minneapolis about 45 minutes later and then he could catch a flight home that would get him home that night. So, yay! I was happy about that.

After I found his flight home, I began the task of finding him a flight there. I knew he needed to fly out Sunday so he could get to work Monday. I ended up finding him another great flight, so my job was done, I was happy, and that’s the extent of how much I thought about it.

Sunday evening after my husband landed for that trip, he called me. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “Well, not that great.” I said, “Why, what’s wrong?” He was real quiet and then responded with incredible calm, “Well, I’m not real sure where my plane landed.” As you can imagine, I was a bit confused, so I said, “What do you mean?” His response was, again, incredibly calm, “Well, I made it to Minneapolis, got on my next flight and now I’m in some town called Bimdiji.”After looking at his phone and the maps, we figured out that instead of flying him to Thief River Falls, I had somehow booked him a flight from Minneapolis to Bimdiji. That just so happens to be about a 2 hour drive from Thief River Falls. Now, by this time it was 11:30pm his time, so the airport was closing down, there were no taxis around, and all the rental car places were closed as well.

After much scrambling, and with incredible grace and patience toward his wife, my husband found a hotel about a 1/4 mile from the airport, where he spent the night. That evening, I furiously looked around to figure out which car rental company he could use. We found out that, unfortunately for us, Thief River Falls didn’t have any of the same car rental companies that Bimdiji did. We tried all different ways of getting him from one city to the next before needing to be in the office by 9am and the major problem was that none of the car rental places opened until 8am. In the end, I did find a car rental company, but my husband would have to drive an hour in the opposite direction, into North Dakota, to drop off the car and then take a taxi back to Thief River Falls. We figured this was going to be the best option. So the next morning, he walked the 1/4 mile back to rent a car and drove the 2 hours to the office in Thief River Falls to start his day at the office late. I’m so thankful to have married such a patient and loving husband. I don’t think most husbands would have responded with such grace, patience and love toward their wives.

It’s nice to be able to look back on that and laugh about it.  I have since coined the term “pulling a Jennie” to describe that incident, and I kind of like it.

 

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