The trip went so well that we saved the bad luck for the final day. The day started like normal, mostly… Matt and Moody took a jog along the river. We had 7-Eleven for breakfast and then took off at 9am, an hour ahead of the plan.
The train to Tokyo was 16min late, no issues since we left plenty of time, but very unusual for Japan. Then at the airport, only three people could get into the lounge, so Matt and Melanie took all the SUCA cards and went on a vending machine crawl at the airport to use the remaining balances on the card.
Then the plane was delayed and wheeled off to the maintenance bay. At that point Belinda got on the phone to evaluate other options. They were able to put us on standby through Detroit. The MSP flight was already delayed a number of times. Both the MSP flight and the DTW flight where scheduled to leave at 6:15pm. The Detroit flight would get in at 9pm vs the MSP would get in at 4pm. Ultimately we decided to go with the Detroit flight, which ended up being the right call, because the MSP flight got delayed a couple more times and then got canceled. We got to Eagan at 10pm, exhausted, but feeling very lucky to be home
It was an amazing trip and even more fun to be able to share it with friends.