like a dream

Nazaré, Portugal, December 2025. Travel stress is worth it if I get to be here.

Do you ever have that dream when you’re leaving for a trip but you aren’t ready and keep getting further and further behind and never actually make it to the airport? The dream just keeps going on and on and the obstacles keep popping up.

Or is it just me?

I have that dream far too often and almost always in the days leading up to a trip. (Honestly, I prefer it over the one where I’m back in high school and haven’t attended physics/class all year and it’s the day of the final exam.) When I wake up, I always remind myself that it was just a dream and that I personally am never that disorganized and my spouse … well, he always gets his stuff together in time and usually with some time to spare.

That said, forces out of our control brought that dream to the front of my mind when we flew out for Portugal a few days after Christmas this past December.

Relevant facts:

• Our home airport (CHO) is a 20 minute drive from our house and one of our offspring always drops us off, so we don’t have to park. Additionally, this small airport has only 5 gates, so between that, plus not checking a bag and having TSA PreCheck to speed up security, means that we can leave 45 minutes before boarding starts and still have time to spare.

• The next closest airport is in Richmond (RIC), which is a solid 70-75 minute drive. My husband will tell you that it is a one-hour drive but I have timed this drive multiple times and verified my findings against Google Maps driving directions.

• Our preferred connecting airport is Dulles (IAD), which is a minimum two-hour drive but can also take 2.5-3 hours without factoring in parking the car and whatnot. And once inside, even with TSA PreCheck, we need to arrive a solid 1.5 hours in advance and I personally prefer to have more time.

• The scheduled flight time between CHO and IAD is usually 45-60 minutes but the actual flight is 17-23ish minutes.

Our original travel plans were to fly out of CHO early Sunday evening and connect in IAD. The connection was tight, but if all went well, it should be fine. If we missed our connecting flight, the next one United offered was 24 hours later.

What actually happened is that several hours before our flight from CHO, we were notified that the flight would be delayed and that we would arrive in IAD after our connecting flight departed. That was what we were told; no alternate travel arrangements were offered.

Oh, and did you know that airlines now make it difficult to call and talk to real humans because they really want you to work with the chatbot. Ugh, no.

Before we did anything, we looked online at our flight options and figured out the possibilities. And, with some digging, we found a phone number. Eventually, one of us was on hold on the phone and the other was trying to work with the chatbot.

Eventually, our call got through to a human. After much discussion, we decided to change our first flight to RIC, which would get us to IAD on time and even a smidge earlier than the other flight would have.

What that meant was that we had to leave 90 minutes earlier than we had planned and now needed to leave in about 45 minutes. (Or an hour, if you’re my husband. Please see relevant note above.)

And…

… we were not totally finished packing. Technically, I was, but at the last minute, I made some stress-induced changes that included unpacking every last pocket of a backpack that I was feeling iffy about and re-packing my tried-and-true bag. (Yes, I know I should have just gone with the trusted bag to begin with. And the other of us was nowhere nearly as ready as the other one was and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

In the end, we left after an hour of hustle, and we got to RIC on time. (Kudos to one of our offspring for dropping everything to drive us the greater distance.) RIC is not a big airport at all, so we breezed through security and got to our gate not long before boarding started. It was all fine, really it was.

And it was all worth it just to see that view I shared at the top of this post.