For months, we had planned our Thanksgiving weekend departure to Albany from John Wayne Airport. Katie would finish classes at UC Irvine, I'd pick her up at school, and we would make the short drive to the airport for an afternoon flight thru Denver. But when I checked the Southwest website around noon, we realized that our first flight was delayed to the point that we would miss our connection in Denver. Hmmm. We called Southwest and were able to change our flight to one leaving LAX and connecting in Chicago to Albany. Phew.

Traffic was practically non-existent, for unknown reasons, and we made it to LAX not only in time for our new flight, but for one leaving an hour earlier. (How did we have so many choices on what is supposedly the busiest travel day of the year?)

At one point, Katie asked, "What about our flight back on Sunday?" It took me a second to realize what she had figured out. Our car is at LAX. Our return flight was to Orange County. 

But with one more call, were also able to make a chance to our Sunday morning return flight back to LAX. It was a very early flight (pre-dawn) which was at first a bit of a downer. But turns out it allowed us to beat a major snowstorm that blew through the Midwest and canceled most of the flights later that day.