Missed Flights!

I have never missed a flight in my life. I have come very close, and some have been cancelled on me, but I have not ever arrived to the airport too late to get on a plane.
For this reason, I feel very badly that within just one month, I have been a part of TWO situations involving missed flights. I'd like to add that neither missed flight was my fault or the fault of the flyer involved. We just happened to run into other problems along the way.

The first missed flight was by my Mom/Grammy. She graciously came to keep me and Christopher company in May when Chris had to go out of town for a work trip. I figured it would be a lonely week and asked her to make the visit. She agreed and we had a wonderful time together. Her flight home was on a Wednesday night - actually the red eye back to Logan airport in Boston. We were all ready to go - suitcase packed, Christopher in his PJs, and the car was loaded. As we were about to leave I pressed the garage door opener on the wall and the garage door only opened about 1 foot high. I tried and tried and it just wouldn't work. I googled how I might fix the problem, and I even tried to get some neighbors to help - but no luck. Finally, I called a garage door repair company to come out to help us. Keep in mind that as all this was happening the minutes were ticking by on the clock and the time we had to get to LAX was dwindling. The garage guys came by and saw that the motor on the opener was shot, and the large spring completely snapped because of this. The guys got the door open manually for us which was no small feat and we jumped in the car and took off to LAX. Needless to say, Mom missed the flight. It was just bad timing. We did however get to pick up Chris at the airport that night so it wasn't a wasted drive and we got to spend two more days with Grammy!

The next missed flight happened on Father's Day. We (Chris, Christopher, and I) had spent the week in Ocean City, NJ and had a wonderful time. Chris had to fly to London that night for work so we had decided before our trip that he would fly out of JFK to shorten his total travel time. My dad even flew down to Atlantic City so I wouldn't have to make the drive from JFK to Boston alone. We left with lots of extra time in case of delays. The drive time from OC to JFK should take about 2. 5 hours - unfortunately for us, there was at least one 15 mile stretch that took us at least 2 hours. It was a very stressful drive and Chris, and hundreds of others, missed their flights that night. Luckily he was able to rebook out of Boston the following evening and we all made it to my parent's house in Canton about 10 hours after we started. One thing we did learn is that Christopher is an amazing traveler - he cried for about 15-20 minutes out of the whole adventure!