Tales from the road part 2

We were ready to roll! 

Sunlight had barely broken through the cloud cover when new trouble found us. We were buckled into our seats on the plane, our books were cracked open and ready for the flight ahead.
But it wasn't going to be so easy. Due to the previous day's frost, snow, ice and cold, the plane's wings needed to de-iced. The difficulty was that so did the wings on two other planes and most of the de-icing crew were MIA. So we waited; and waited and waited some more. Most of our fellow passengers' head were slumped in sleep; the pilot would make occasional announcement and with each announcement he sounded more and more irritable at the missing de-icing employees.
Dad popped by and announced that we would not be making our next flight to Florida and therefore we needed to produce plan B. Across the aisle, my sisters' children were aghast. Her oldest son had tears running down his face. Vacation was over, he declared.
But it wasn't over; it was far from finished. My sister comforted her son and I flipped my iPad on, hoping to lure my  niece and youngest nephew into watching the movie, "Pacific Rim," with me. The plane did finally whizz into the air and rush down onto the tarmac at the Atlanta airport. We huddled in one corner of the gate to develop Plan B-which Dad explained, was either catch a plane tomorrow or rent a car and drive to Boca Raton-our final destination.
Now, this is not the first time my family and I have missed a flight and were faced with waiting overnight before catching a flight. That time, we stayed overnight at a hotel. There are a lot of details I don't remember-where we were traveling to and where we delayed at-no, what I recall is the mustard-yellow fleece blanket in the hotel room and the minute-size tube of toothpaste the hotel provided us.
I wasn't in the mood to replay that memory and it turns out that no one else was either. The group all unanimously agreed to press forward by car. There was an excitement in our group of seven travelers.  We were giddy that the vacation hadn't stalled; it would proceed.
But it wouldn't be easy, our parents warned. There would be no lengthy stops, no breaks for meals, nothing of the sort.
Fair enough, the rest of the party said. So we crowded in a large minivan and headed down a Georgia highway. The minivan was filled with mixed emotions- relief to be proceeding and anticipation for what we would encounter next.