I Swear I Have Been Here Before

As with many a Polansky international journey, this one too is starting at Wal-mart. Last night I asked dad for our international converter. He yet again couldn’t find it. As loyal blog readers will remember the Asian adventure of 2008 began at Wal-mart with the $9000 foot rest. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot on Delta Oaks I swore I was having déjà-vu back to that morning in ’08. Dad was having a mini-freak out that there were no cars in the parking lot and that the store must be closed. The same open 24 hour sign was prominently placed by the front door, just like two years ago. And just like two years ago, dad still didn’t believe it. We entered the store and dad hurriedly shuffled toward the aspirin he wanted to buy. I went to the back for the converter. As I returned to the front of the store, he spotted me near the checkout and started running toward me. I know Wal-mart is a big store and he probably missed me, since I was gone SO long, but still, the running was uncalled for. It did make me laugh, however, since I knew there was no way we would make it out of the store without him having run at least once. A nice woman quickly checked us out and another ancient nice lady, Lillian, wished us a good morning at the door. We were off to the airport.

On the way to the airport I called the United 1K desk to confirm that our flight was in fact still going. The agent said it was and that United was actually flying all of its long haul flights to Europe for the first time in a week. I was pumped, I told the guy thanks for confirming that barring a mechanical problem or an additional volcanic eruption we’d be in Amsterdam by morning!

Evidently all of Spring Blvd decided to go somewhere this morning. We spent a good part of the time before our flight talking to Lori and then Mark and Mary showed up too. Mark and Mary happened to be on our flight to Denver and sat in the row in front of us. We talked to them for a bit and then I fell asleep. We walked from our arrival gate to the Red Carpet Room with Mark and Mary. We were telling them about our plans and how we were going to road trip around. Mark asked if I was looking forward to driving on the Autobahn. I told him I was. He then asked if I was disappointed I wouldn’t be able to drive dad’s Taurus on the Autobahn... hahahahaha... score one for Dr. Jewell! I’m frankly impressed that Mark even knows that’s what dad drives and the fact that he commented on it is just extra funny.

In the Red Carpet Room in Denver mom and I started accumulating our free emergency survival food. We nearly filled an entire quart bag of yogurt covered raisins. At one point I went for a cup on the opposite side of the lounge, while unbeknownst to me mom was getting a cup on the near side. Meeting back at the seats with two giant cups of raisins made us both laugh a bit.

We left the club to head for our flight from Denver to Chicago. We boarded on time and got settled in our seats. I was pretty dang tired at this point and proceeded to fall asleep. After I while I thought I heard the captain come on and say something about a delay. I was too tired to concentrate on what he was saying, so I just ignored him. Later I thought I heard the captain again, so I thought I should open my eyes and see what figure out what was going on. When I opened my eyes and looked out the window we were still on the ground. That’s never a good sign when you’ve already been asleep long enough for drooling to commence. It turns out that when I woke up we had been sitting at the gate for roughly an hour. The captain come on and explained that we had an oil leak in the engine and mechanic needed to take a look at it. Thirty minutes later he came back on and announced that the problem could be fixed but the oil would have to be completely drained and changed. This was going to take another hour. In all we sat on the runway for two and a half hours before taking off. We had a two and half hour layover in Chicago. We had a chance at making our flight, but it wasn’t a great one.

We pulled up to our gate in Chicago at 6:02 pm. Our flight to AMS was scheduled to depart at 6:05 pm. We ran to the gate, which was conveniently only three gates down. Unfortunately our plane was long gone.

During the repeated delays while we sat in Denver I made a back up plan with the 1K desk. If we missed our flight, which we did, the earliest we could get to Amsterdam would be the following day on a flight from Washington DC. United wanted to put us up in Chicago for the night but I wanted to get to DC to avoid the possibility of having a mechanical hiccup again the next day. There was a 9:55 pm flight out of ORD to IAD and we decided to take it.

We landed at IAD at roughly 12:30 pm. We went to the baggage claim hoping that the arrangements we made in Chicago to get our bags to IAD would work. Turns out they didn’t. After speaking with a very nice United customer service lady she determined that our bags never left Chicago. This sent mom off the handle a little bit. Mom is not a fan of traveling without her stuff and the potential of getting to Europe without bags raised her personal stress level to orange.

I was hoping that the bags had just been tagged with the original rerouting United wanted to put us on, meaning the they would go to DC in the morning and then take our flight to AMS with us in the evening. Only time will tell. For now we are staying in a very nice Courtyard by Marriott. I had hoped to spend the first night of this trip at a Courtyard by Marriott. The only problem is the hotel I had originally booked was in Brussels, Belgium not an Off Airport Property, Virginia!

Here’s to hoping tomorrow will be a more successful travel day,

Katy