10 hours on a plane, and at least that many at o'hare.
Today's itinerary:
Flying home.
Reaching O'Hare.
Begging, borrowing, and stealing to get to California.
We were picked up at 6am for a 9:30am flight at Ben Gurion. We thought it was a little excessive, even with the added security that's always present at Israel's airports.
And it was excessive: Israel has this security thing down, and they have so many people on staff to handle the various elements of security that we got done really early and had to sit around.
When we got to Frankfurt, the clerk couldn't check us through to San Jose because of something going on at O'Hare. Oh great, we thought. Another line to wait in.
The flight between Frankfurt and Chicago showed Ever After and What Dreams May Come in continuous loop, but watching movies was a pain in the butt because the screen was a little screen in the back of the chair in front of you. And if the person in front of you moved, you had to adjust the color and brightness accordingly, or shift yourself. (Not high quality screens.) I think I may have slept for some of this flight.
We got to O'Hare and discovered that our flight to San Jose had been cancelled. And in fact flights had been cancelled left and right for a day or so, so O'Hare was totally messed up.
We waited in a very long United line. "How are you going to get us out of here?" we asked.
The earliest they would guarantee our getting to San Jose was on a flight oon Wednesday--this being Sunday, that didn't sound so good. Or, she could guarantee a flight from Denver to San Jose, but she had no idea how we could get to Denver. Or we could go see what American had.
Fine.
So we went over to American and discovered that they did have a flight to Los Angeles. We could then take a flight from LAX to San Jose the next day. "We'll take it!"
We got in to LAX at midnight and took a taxi to our house. I didn't want to leave. I did want to see my parents and all, but...my bed was so comfy.
But the idea of rousing myself later in the week to fly up to San Jose and back seemed even less likely, so our trip would continue.
We had originally scheduled ourselves to take the 8am LAX-SJC flight, which I decided was nuts, so I rescheduled us for the 10am flight. Which meant we had to be out the door by 8, but at least that gave us a few more hours sleep.
We got to the airport, which was a mess (some of the holdover from the O'Hare foulup of a few days before). We got into an express line and got checked in. Then we got to the gate and discovered we had a problem. The flight was delayed. Indefinitely.
Six hours, to be exact.
I read an entire book. We ate two meals. We discussed any number of topics, not the least of which was what things we were going to write to United airlines about their waiting area at LAX (which is under construction and doesn't have enough seating or good sound, so we could never understood what was being said or whether our flight was being called).
The funny thing was the changes we made about what we were going to do once we got to San Jose. Originally we were supposed to have pancakes with Rob and Laura. Then we were supposed to have lunch with them. Then eventually it became Laura would pick us up by herself.
We eventually made it to Mitch's condo, where we dropped our stuff off. Mitch and Darin went food shopping. Then Mitch let us take his car up to the City, where Darin and I had dinner with my parents and told them all about our vacation in Israel.
All in all, a really great vacation, except for the travelling parts.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com