Apparently I never posted this...day late and dollar short. Story of my life. This was from January 30th.
I’ve been at San Diego airport since 6am. My flight is at 7:30. Randy drove with Loreen and my two boys in tow. Can’t be seen off without my boys. As it turns out I have to pay for my bags. From what I understand PC will reimburse for this. BUT they will not pay for over weight limit charges. Although PC said a total of 80 pounds AAs weight limit is 50 pounds per suitcase. I have one suitcase that is 53 pounds and the other is 54. Opposed to charging me for both bags she let me move stuff around so I would have one bag at 50 pounds and one at 57. So Josh and I took care of that in a minute. Exactly 50 & 57. The extra weight cost me another $60!! Who knew. But what I am going to do. There’s nothing in there I don’t need. Of course I say that now…we’ll see how much I am bringing with me that I don’t need, want or will ever use. I tried to pack as smartly as I could…but we’ll see.
Then we went to have some breakfast. I didn’t eat much, shared a burrito with Jarrod. And then the time came...time to say goodbye. There was crying and sobbing (my oldest son is quite a drama king) and the saying of nice things. I love you so much, I’m going to miss you more than you will ever know. I don’t know what I would have done without you guys in my life. As I waited on thankfully was a very short security line, they all stood there crying and waving and not wanting to make the final parting of the ways. But when I finally left out of site they left as well.
Almost made it through security without a glitch. Just as I was putting my shoes on, they grabbed my backpack to put through the scanner again. Stupid, stupid scanner. There is something in there that is unidentifiable. They moved me over to the check desk and will have to go through it by hand. My brother gave me a water filter and apparently no one has seen one of these things before. I only put it in my carry on because it is the one thing I would hate for anything to happen to it. Clean water will be crucial on this trip. Finally I get cleared, just a short walk to my gate and…WAALAA…my plane is starting to roll. WAIT…WHAT??? It’s 7:21 and the flight time is 7:30. WTF…it’s not supposed to leave for another 9 minutes. How can this be. So I frantically (still crying mind you) ask the clerk at the next desk what’s going on. My flight is scheduled to leave at 7:30 and it’s already pushing away. Yes, she says, you are supposed to be at the gate 10 minutes prior to departure. OK…I get that…but you LEAVE EARLY??? Who does that. What form of transportation EVER leaves early. When you a running a system that is as precise as a train, or..i don’t know…A FRIGGIN PLANE, how do you just take off early!!?? Where are my bags?. Oh they’re still on the plane. They will be waiting for you in DC. Really? Seriously? It used to be that if bags were checked in but the person whose bags they were didn’t show up for the flight they would pull the bags. OMG…you have got to be kidding me. And they may have left 10 minutes prior but they had already given away my seat, everyone’s belted in and they did their “safety” checks. All in 1 minute. I think not. They gave my seat away 20 minutes before take off time.
Finally I am underway after waiting so long and working so hard. Finally something to really blog about, orientation, the traveling, the new people I will be meeting. All squashed because the plane, which they never usually even leave on time, left 9 minutes early. What a way to finally begin Clare’s Peace Corps Adventures!!
And they have you by the balls. I can’t say “screw it I’ll drive”, or “I’ll take the train”. Now on stand-by for the 8:30 flight.
Not so much…well…maybe 9:35.
Nope, not 9:35. Still overbooked. Maybe 10:50. Only consolation, there is a beautiful Haitian man in the same boat/plane, or lack thereof, as me. So we are moving from gate to gate together, chatting it up and making the best of a bad situation. My new BFF.
So if I don’t make the 10:50, there’s another flight at noon, then another flight at 12:50 and so on. Worst case scenario, I get a red eye getting into Dulles at 1am. There’s plenty of seats on that flight. Well of course there is.
The 10:50…NOPE. Next possible flight to DC is at 12:06 thru Chicago instead of Dallas, getting into DC at midnight.
So here I am sitting in O’hare airport in Chicago. 7:30pm local time and my flight doesn’t leave for another hour and 20 minutes. I realized I hadn’t eaten since my couple of bites of burrito at 7am. I never eat fast food, but I gotta tell you the chicken snack wrap from McDonald’s is a tasty little sandwich. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my BFF.
Made some phone calls to let everyone know my status, texted a bit including calling my friend John whom I haven’t seen in 4 years that was going to pick me up in DC at 5 and hang out with me for a while to let him know what’s up. Hopefully I will get to see him tomorrow. Life does not go as planned does it. Bummer. Thankfully I was already getting in a whole day in advance. I have plenty of time to get a good night sleep and make it to orientation by noon tomorrow. Maybe I’ll study some Bambara while I wait.
I didn’t study Bambara. I was falling asleep waiting. But I got on the plane, had an uneventful flight to DC and landed at midnight. The airlines actually had my bags waiting for me in a locked room. I don’t know what I would’ve done if my bags weren’t there. I probably would’ve just thrown my hands up and went home. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. There were shuttles just sitting there waiting to take people to their hotel destinations. I got right on, after the supervisor chatted me up and gave me his number so he could entertain me while I was in town, and they took me right to my hotel. On $14. Nice!! Got my room and all I kept thinking is I need to pee, get on my PJs, get on Skype to talk to the boys and get a good nights sleep. This day is over. Nothing else could go wrong, right? WRONG!! I get to my door and the room key is not working. Put the card in and tried again, and one more time before I punched the door and without caring who heard me yelled some profanities…just as someone opened the door on the other side. I let out a little shriek. Was totally not expecting that. I kind of assumed they were going to room us with other volunteers but they never mentioned it. I was a little surprised to say the least. Of course she was already in bed. It was 1am by now. I went downstairs to the lobby, outside in 26 degree temperatures and called my brother to let him know I was there, my sister and the boys. Took a shower and went to bed. Which is what I really needed to do but I wanted to go through my suitcases and adjust stuff, I was going to study some Bambara (yeah right) and watch a little TV. It’s my last 2 nights of being able to watch TV for a very long time. I wanted to get on my computer, check in with everyone. Say goodbye one more time. Oh well, I guess nothing else can go wrong, right? WRONG!! I wake up in the morning and my roomie says, “I didn’t keep you up all night did I?” Nope…slept like a baby. “Because” she says, “I was up all night I think I have the flu.” Are you frickin kidding me. I felt bad for her, but my first thought is “I’ve been waiting a long time for this. You can’t get me sick now.”
So she missed orientation today, had to go to the doctors and slept most of the day. By the time I checked on her she assured me that she had not thrown up recently. So that was a good sign. She had no fever so that was a good sign. They will determine tomorrow if she is well enough to get the yellow fever shot we need before we take off. If so, then she can go. If not…looks like all her packing and planning was for nothing. What a bummer that would be. I got my own room.
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