Part 3: Fire, Ice and Foam

Part 3 of 3: This time fire of the stomach and foam of the mouth.

Up until this point the 18 hour flight to South Africa had been my longest travel time, but overnight at Newark had already blown that one out of the water. I’d known a long trip was going to hurt and I’d been expecting exhaustion. I never sleep much on flights and I didn’t feel so good on the flight to London, but I wasn’t that surprised after the last 2 days. When I got to London, I had of coursed missed my connecting flight and had to stand for almost 2 hours in the flight connections line to get re-booked. We’d landed around noon London time but there wasn’t another flight until 9:30 that they could get me on. The guy at the desk was very nice and he upgraded my seat to World Traveler Plus and gave me a 10 pound voucher for the airport. Unfortunately, all of my Newark buddies had either earlier connections than me or had left the airport, so once again I was alone. I walked around the whole airport looking for a quiet place to try to sleep. I slept for a bit but when I woke up I was really starting to not feel good. I used my 10 pound voucher (“You must spend this all in one place”) and tried to get myself to eat some food. But shortly after I ate I ended up in the bathroom vomiting. Of course now it was only an hour till the flight. How sick was I? Should I get on the plane and risk being sick on the plane? Should I stay in London and be sick in London? They called for my plane to board so I made the journey across Heathrow to my terminal. By the time I got there I knew I was in trouble. I vomited once more as they called boarding but I didn’t even know what the protocol would be to get off the flight. So I boarded and settled into my nice upgraded seat. And proceeded to vomit for the entire 8 hour flight. As I clutched the porcelain throne I remembered my Newark buddy telling me at the airport  “Traveling alone is very liberating and self-fulfilling.” Well I’m here to tell you there is nothing liberating about choking on your own vomit on a dirty bathroom floor. Turns out getting sick on a plane sucks just as much as you would think, even though the bathroom is set up with tissues, vomit bags and paper towels all within easy reach of the toilet. It took the flight attendants a while to realize just how sick I was. When they finally did they gave me some electrolyte drink. The first one went the way of everything else in my body, but the second one stayed down.

When I stumbled off the plane I could barely stand upright after spending 8 hours bowing to the porcelain god. When the customs official told me I’d missed filling out a line on the form and sent me to the back I burst into tears, but he was unsympathetic. I finally stumbled through to the baggage claim where I sat on the floor watching the carousel go by. I think I might have blacked out for a bit because I suddenly realized the sign said all baggage was on the track and naturally mine was nowhere to be found. When I went to the BA rep to report my bag she said “We don’t have a report of a bag missing.” “Right, that’s why I’m here, to report a bag as missing.” I had to fill out all these forms while she reassuringly told me “We don’t have any record of what happened to your bag.” It was December 29th by the time I got there, and I didn’t get my bag until the 31st. Of course the first time I called for the status on the 30th I was told “Call back tomorrow, last we scanned it was in London.” But when I called back that afternoon they said “You should have called yesterday, we found it in London today and we’re putting it on a plane tonight.” British Airways customer service, you can expect my call.

While I was filling out paperwork my friends were arranging for someone to pick me up. They wanted to know how they should look for me and my response was “I’m the one who looks like $#%@.” Who should my friend have sent to pick me up? A friend from high school who is currently a doctor in Delhi, with his fiance who works at the airport. He went to a pharmacy and got me some anti-vomiting meds, and she called the airport to double-check on my bag. If I’ve ever looked bad before when I traveled, the mess they delivered to my friend’s doorstep was probably closer to something you’d see on Halloween.

Part 2: Fire, Ice and Foam

Part 2 of 3:

At 6 pm the pilot went by, and we all clapped. He came and spoke to us and apologized for stranding everyone at the airport. He said they tried to get a hotel for us but the bus had broken down on the way.

At 7 pm he came out with the news that first of all, these machines had been compacting the snow and ice on the runway and now it needed to be measured to see if it was safe for planes. But the machine that did that was broken. So he was going to walk out there and test it with his feet. UNRELATEDLY a truck had caught fire somewhere else at the airport and the fire trucks had used all of their fire-retardant foam putting it out. By law a plane must have fire protection to take off, so we would have to wait at least an hour for the foam trucks to refill. In the meantime the captain went out to stamp down the runway. By this point we were just laughing and all went to the bar. We were worried the captain would fall and break a leg while checking the ice. Do pilots need their legs to fly?

The only good part in all of this was that our little group made friends. Spending 2 days in an airport together will do that to you. Even though the announcement ran all night “do not leave your bags unattended” we were all leaving our stuff everywhere at this point. After all they’d been unattended when we were unconscious. There was a couple from Australia who had come to New York to skate at Rockefeller center just like in American Christmas movies. They were on their way to Zürich to ski, but perhaps they should have just stepped outside. There were two guys from Pennsylvania on their way to Ireland for the New Year. While one of my new buddies and I were chatting at the bar about travels, a mother and daughter duo from another stranded flight struck up a conversation with us. They assumed we were a couple and offered us to sleep at their house if the flights were canceled again. We were even going to put one of their kids out of their beds. We were hysterical after they left and kind of wanted to see how long we could pretend to be a couple. Another one of our plane buddies asked if we could pretend to have an adopted son from Zimbabwe. At this point we thought, why not?

The pilot came back every hour telling us things weren’t looking good but he was still going to try something else. I was ready to just leave at this point but the plane had my luggage (which it apparently was going to keep anyway…) so I didn’t even know how to go about leaving. If it delayed one more day, I was just going to cancel the trip since I would have missed most of the wedding I was going for and the second half of my trip was going to be traveling alone with a guide. I’d finally resigned myself that this trip wasn’t happening when at midnight the pilot said “board now!” and we took off at 1:15 am.

Part 1: Fire, Ice And Foam

Part 1 of 3:

When I called my friend to tell him I’d be going to India for the wedding of our mutual friend he said “Dude, you are going to get so sick!” He was eerily prophetic, but I mistakenly assumed he meant once I got to India . . . but more on that later.

My flight was scheduled for December 26th from the lovely town of Newark, New Jersey. Though I had religiously checked the snow situation in London after it held up a couple of my friends’ flights, I was completely taken by surprise when I learned on Christmas day that a foot of snow was being predicted for Pennsylvania for the 26th. The morning of the 26th looked ominous, and all British Airway flights following my 6:45 one had already been canceled. I guess my flight was right on the cusp of “Let’s see how bad this thing really gets. “ I made two fortuitous decisions (well, my mother may have made them). One to pack my outfit for the wedding in my carry on, and two to book a hotel in Newark just in case the flight was canceled. My brother-in-law nicely offered to drive me up early before the snow hit so I could be there if we did still take off. The snow started on our drive up, and we passed at least 10 accidents on the way. Apparently people forget even basic driving rules at the sight of the first flake. When I got to the airport, we waited until after 3pm for anyone to show up to the BA counter and start checking us in. I heard one of the agents saying they were trying to move up our flight time, but the line was crawling so they really needed to step up their check-in. By 5 pm I could barely see out the window, and we were still waiting for news. At 6 pm they had 4 de-icers like alien spiders on the plane next to us, and they boarded us as well. We thought we were set, but then the pilot announced that Newark had already closed the runway, but he was hoping for a window since they had “focused all their efforts on this one flight.” Flight attendants brought around booze and turned on the entertainment, though of course my row was broken. And at 8:30pm they de-boarded us. It’s incredibly disappointing to get settled on a cramped plane only to get kicked off without actually going anywhere. They apologized profusely but didn’t give any direction beyond that we needed to leave the gate and go get our luggage. All the de-boarded flights crowded together waiting for maybe 40 minutes for the luggage to come and only then would they allow us to talk to a BA rep at the gate. But when I went over they said they weren’t in charge of re-booking, and I had to call.

So then I had to figure out how to get to my hotel. I wisely stopped at Subway before attempting to get across the airport. I needed to take the airtrain transport but none of the agents could tell me if it was actually working. They knew one had been stuck on the tracks but were more concerned with arguing with each other about whether or not they could use the airport wheelchairs as chairs than answering our questions. I waited maybe 2 hours for one to show up going the right direction, and it was almost too packed for me to get in. It dropped me at a drafty parking garage area that was crowded with tired and angry people waiting for shuttles to their hotels. The shuttle for my hotel took an hour to come and I shutter to think how close we must have come to getting stranded in the snow. We passed car after car, after bus, after 18-wheeler stranded all over the roads.

While I had been making this sojourn across the frozen tundra of New Jersey, my mother called BA and found my flight wasn’t “canceled” but “rescheduled” for 6 pm the 27th. The next day, I had lunch at the hotel watching the news about the “crippling storm,” but I did learn that ”in happier news Hugh Hefner is getting married again,” so at least there was that… Around noon I headed back to the airport where I found the rest of my flight who had slept on the floor of the airport. Of course to get their luggage they had to leave the gate which had both carpet and padded seats. The counter area just had a hard floor and drafts. Apparently a BA agent had passed out blankets to “women and children.” BA showed up at 2:30 confirming that only our “rescheduled” flight would be going out today because there weren’t any other planes at the airport. Departure was set for 7:30 since the airport was officially closed until 6pm. We didn’t take off until after 1am and it was completely uncertain until we actually left the ground…to be continued.

Jet-setter 2.0

I know in my post Jet-Setter I already touched on the elegance that is me in the airport, but this trip to California brought me to an all-time low. The big issue: over packing undersized bags. Never again will I bring a backpack as my carry on. I can’t even remember why I thought that was a good idea beforehand. I know wheeled-suitcases are a must for both carry on and check. And yet somehow I ended up with a 30 lb backpack threatening to topple me at any moment. The problem with the checked luggage was one word: wine. I was in wine country, at a wine class, so of course I got a little carried away buying wine. And I also discovered that unlike international flights where only 2 bottles are allowed, you can put as many as you want in the luggage domestically. Now I didn’t go crazy-I only had 3, but just asking one more bottle sent me seriously close to the weight limit on my bag. To be exact I weighed in at 49 lbs exactly (and for those of you who don’t know, the limit is 50 lbs or else you are charged $50 more for going over limit). So of course I was sweating more than usual! And to go with the wine? 2 wine glasses. I know, I know, who would try to pack fragile stemware in with 49 lbs of crap?? Me, of course. I’d gotten the wine glasses complimentary from wine tasting in Temecula with my friend and I couldn’t bear to part with them. (I did leave one of them with my friend, but I did take one red glass and one white glass). In my defense: everything made it.  Not a chip in one glass! Not a break in one bottle! And a taste test last night revealed at least one bottle wasn’t ruined by transport!

The second issue was my fabulous new hat. I know others are not as thrilled with my new floppy hat as I am, but I truly am quite excited about it. But there was no way it was going to fit in my suitcase. So instead, not only did I carry it with me through the airport, that was also where I got the most wear out of it. California apparently gets summer later than us (which I wouldn’t know since this was only my second time making a domestic trip in maybe 15 years) so it wasn’t really beach-y/poolside weather. So the place I wore my hat the most was in the lady’s room where I’d pop it on my head so I’d have my hands free. I’m not sure what people thought as I exited stalls with a floppy beach hat perched on my head, but I figured there wasn’t much lower I could go at that point.

Nurturing my Domestic Side

I’ve been meaning for a long time to get myself to California to visit my best friend from college and when her break after her Medical school graduation coincided perfectly with a week-long wine immersion course it seemed like fate. So I headed out for one week in San Diego and then one week in Livermore. But before I go into detail about those two trips I want to talk a little about my culture shock from traveling domestically. Except for a short flight to Cincinnati two years ago I haven’t flown domestically in 17 years. Also it was my first time flying Southwest, and I do not get what is going on there. Everyone is in polo shirts and cargo shorts. It’s open seating free-for-all on the the plane and everyone is jovial. I guess I get the relaxed atmosphere they are going for, but I can’t trust a man in shorts. I guess I’ve just been spoiled, but here are some of the biggest surprises:

1. No movies

2. No free booze

3. No meal

4. No free bags

5. No movies

6. No going through customs

7. Shorter flights (The nice thing about having flown 18 hours to South Africa is that almost any flight seems short.)