Hurry Up & Wait!!!
Well… It’s been an “exciting” first day of travel. Dave and I made it to Logan (thanks Mike) with our 4,000 pound bags set nicely in the American Airlines queue. We were then informed that we needed to be at the American Eagle desk…. at the other end of the terminal… at that point we told Mike to go so that we could trek down to where we needed to be… Since Mike had been so kind to carry my bags in, I had no idea what I was about to try and do… I heard fellow travelers laughing as I tried to put on my backpack, camera bag, and GIGANTIC HPOM duffle bag as well as tote my rolling personal bag and laptop bag. Needless to say we made it maybe 20 feet and Dave was sent on a mission to find one of those handy-dandy rolling carts. My mind was a bit conscious of the time since we had left a bit later than we “planned” and then were stuck in a bit of traffic. We finally made it to the desk and had our boarding passes in hand. As we approached to security line we noticed a big sign that said “NO RESTROOMS BEYOND THIS POINT”, since it was now 5:35pm and our plane should be boarding soon Dave and I decided that we could wait until we got on the plane. We proceeded to out gate to see a sign that said “FLIGHT DELAYED 7:15pm”… ugh!!! I spoke with the person at the counter and she said that the plane was in route… phew… it’s not mechanical issues…. and she said we could go back out to use the restroom…. YAY!!! When I got in the stall I noticed among the graffiti on the wall was the Lord’s Prayer… that set me back to reality and was a welcomed sight. Our plane arrived and Dave had to go outside to spin the propeller :-). It was an odd plane… and… it had it’s very own snow making feature… you can ask Dave about that one… and a few of the other passengers if you ever run into them.Now on to JFK… we arrived at 8:15pm and our flight to Frankfurt left at 9:30pm. Since the plane we were on was so small, we had to give them our carry-ons before we got on the plane so we had to wait for them. Then was the task of finding what terminal Singapore was at… after much searching we discovered it was at terminal 4… we were at terminal 9… ugh… now where is that air-train?? When we finally discovered where we were going we started walking quite a bit faster since we saw the “Last Call” on the board. As we neared the gate security we went straight to the front to tell them our dilemma. The guard immediately call the nice little Asian man holding the Singapore sign waiting for us. And he brought us to the front of the security line… oh ya… there were some happy travelers around us at that point… then it started… ”hurry-up we gotta run!!!” As I am putting my bags up and trying to take out my laptop and… and… and… When I got to the other side and was trying to put my laptop in my bag another lady grabbed my stuff and said “COME ON WE GOTTA RUN!!!” They already grabbed our boarding passes…. I felt really safe…. Just then I see Dave stuck with the guy trying to go through his bag. I tried to yell to the lady running away with my bags… another lady yelled “HURRY YOU GOTTA RUN!!!” So, I told her of Dave's issue and she grabbed our passports, and got Dave out of his situation and then the running began… I personally was not wearing the good ole running shoes… I decided to wear a pair of “easy off on the plane shoes” aka “easy off while running shoes”… I then thought take them off and run or just walk very fast since I know they aren’t going to leave us now…. & Dave agreed with me. Needless to say we were at the last possible gate and it was 20 miles away. We finally made it on the plane and Dave told me another lady passenger said to him “Late, very late…” ummmm…. DUH!!!!! So we get to our seats in the back of the plane where we got to pass by all the other passengers… we took our seats and then proceeded to wait over an hour before the plane was cleared to leave the ground… grrrr…..
Now we sit in Germany… we went to pick up our luggage because they couldn’t/wouldn’t check it all through to Namibia… it wasn’t there. After speaking with the nice man at the counter he told me that 1 bag was in Boston… STILL…. 1 bag was in Manchester… ENGLAND… and the other 2 are MIA, no signs of ever being scanned… but he assured me that they would be in Namibia tomorrow or the next day… To Dave and I this was a blessing in disguise. Yea… I think we’ll get our bags sometime… yea… we have extra clothes in our carry-ons… YAY!!! We don’t have to lug those things around all day!!!!! The Air Namibia counter doesn’t open until 8:00pm it’s 4:00pm now… there is no more hurrying… See the rest of the team in 5 days… oh yea… please pray for those bags…. If they don’t show… we won’t have sleeping bags and the band won’t have a tent.... plus all the other things that were jammed in the bags.... but the tent and Dave's sleeping bag are most important...
posted by germaine @ 12:21 PM
