Ok - back from church. If you haven't read the first part of our "flight day home" story, it's below. On with the story.
Fifteen minutes after I last see Steve, he returns with the fam in tow. They have all taken a dip in the sea of humanity and have made it to the other side.
I think now it's about 9:20 am. Still plenty of time for our 12:05 flight. I had been watching people come up to the Northwest counter and figured out that you first have to go to one of 5 or so self-serve computer terminals to get your boarding pass, THEN you get in line to check your baggage in. Weird, but it's *their* system. So Steve gets back and I'm trying to tell him that we have to get our boarding passes when the little queue-guard directing people to the computer terminals tells us that we can skip that because we're traveling with small children. Ok. I can live with that! So far things are looking up!
The line moves relatively swiftly and it's our turn to go up to the counter. There are 4-5 non-first class Northwest employees checking people in, and we are directed to the one on the far left end. We are glad to get this spot because: a)we're not blocking the line behind us with our 4 trolleys containing 12 suitcases, 6 carry-ons, 3 car seats, not to mention the 2 strollers that are holding squirmy girls, in addition to Mom, Caleb, me, and Steve, and b)there's room for us to spread out with the aforementioned junk.
But little do we know that we have gotten in line with "the spare."
A couple of years ago, my dad and brother introduced Steve and I to a term they had heard (maybe on ESPN?): the spare. The spare is basically a person who is sub-par. For example: Potsie from "Happy Days." He's not really an integral part of the team and serves no real purpose. Dad and Aa: please help clarify this definition!
So our Northwest employee is the spare. We can't tell if he's new or not, but we know for sure that he's Dutch. This makes sense because Northwest is part of the KLM (Royal Dutch Airline) family. This gangly red-headed spare takes no less then ONE HOUR AND TEN MINUTES to get us checked in. Why? We still haven't figured that one out. The guy was doing more hunting and pecking on his keyboard than I thought possible and was mumbling every now and then in his weird Dutch-lilt accent. He even left at one point and went "behind the wall" to ask his supervisor something.
Good grief!
I actually know what part of the problem was. When we came to England, Julie only had a "lap sit" ticket. We actually paid $200 for her to sit on our laps. I knew that on the way back we wanted her to have her own seat, so I called KLM (since I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to contact Northwest by phone from the UK since they didn't list any non-1-800 numbers) and bought her a ticket home. I wanted to just upgrade her lap-sit deal to a real deal, but apparently the Dutch-lilt-speaking KLM people either didn't understand my non-lilting speech or the upgrade wasn't possible. Anyway, Jules ended up with 2 tickets. This really threw our Dutch spare off.
The one good thing about this ordeal was that even though most of our bags exceeded the 50 pound limit, he didn't charge us. It would have been expensive and ugly if he'd charged us.
After we get all 12 suitcases and 1 carseat checked onto the flight and the other 2 carseats checked to meet us at the gate, Steve asked if we'd be able to make it through security in time for our flight. Guess what the guy said..... "I hope so."
I hope so? You have GOT to be kidding me! Steve about came unglued at that statement. We were concerned because we had been hearing airport employees telling other passengers that they needed to find the end of the queue for security. "It's around here somewhere," they would say. Apparently there was a person holding up a yellow sign on a stick that said "Security Q ends here."
We were so frazzled by this point that we didn't even want to begin considering the ramifications of missing our flight. We found the end of the security queue and were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't wrapped around the building like it was when we first arrived. THAT was the sea of humanity.
As we're standing in line (by now it's 10:30) I decide to pop over to Boots (the pharmacy) and get some sandwiches and drinks for a late breakfast/early lunch. We were counting on being able to get behind security to get something to eat before our flight, so we didn't really eat a big breakfast. Just little nibbles in our hotel room.
While I'm off getting the food, Mom takes Audrey to the restroom. Steve is in line with Caleb, Julie, the 2 strollers and the 6 carry-on bags, when an airport employee who is patrolling the security queue stops to chat. She informs him that we need to consolidate our bags because Julie doesn't get her own carry on. Steve says that she has her own ticket, to which the lady replies that the ability to have a carry-on for an infant is up to the discretion of the security people. Bull. That's partly why we bought her the ticket to begin with - she gets 2 suitcases and a carry-on! But this lady is one of *those* people who know the right answer to everything.
Steve totally blew her off.
She came by a little bit later and made some remark about not being able to consolidate the bags and Steve just ignored her. Ha ha. We needed to vent a little frustration by this point.
To make an hour-and-a-half-long-story short, we were in line until 11:50. No kidding. Our flight was scheduled for 12:05. I was more than a little worried. Steve and the kids get through security just fine, but they stop Mom and I to search our carry-ons. Great. They want us to OPEN THE BABY FOOD AND TASTE IT. I knew this was a possibility, but come on! It's porridge! So Mom opened the one in her bag, which had already been opened earlier in the morning to feed Julie, and I opened 3 brand new bottles. I was so ticked off. They told me that if the jars had been 100 mls instead of 160 mls, they wouldn't have messed with it.
So while Mom and I are enjoying British baby food, Steve is hauling his rear end (and pushing Julie in her stroller) through the airport to our terminal. We were just a few minutes behind him. After we left security, I saw a sign that said that our gate was a 20 minute walk from that point. Lovely. Super. We were going to miss our flight.
We ran. I don't remember much; Caleb running on those moving walkways, Mom's voice behind me saying she was still there, a lady with a walkie-talkie asking if we were the rest of the family belonging to the man with the baby for Northwest flight 4...
....we made it.
Steve was handing the paperwork to the people at the gate and they had held the plane for us. We boarded that puppy at 12:05. We were the last ones on and I felt like ALL EYES WERE ON US. I didn't care. We were on the plane. We were on the plane!
Mom sat with Caleb, I sat behind them with Audrey, and Julie was behind us with Steve. The carseats were there waiting for us at the gate and we got everyone strapped in.
The flight itself was uneventful. They had on-demand movies instead of the "everyone watches the same movie" loop that American Airlines had. So Audrey watched "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast" and I was able to fast-forward through the scary parts for her. Julie did relatively well, and the big kids were a dream.
We were so relieved to make it to Minneapolis. We were in the right country! Yeah! We got there about 2 or 3 pm (I don't remember) and were the last ones off. We forgot the front carrier pack for the baby and had to get an airline employee to get it for us off the plane, but by the time we did that, our luggage was there waiting for us on the conveyor belt. We had to check it through customs ourselves. This was the point in Chicago 18 months ago that caused Steve and I to miss our connecting flight to Albuquerque.
Steve starts looking around for trolleys. Here in the States, you have to pay for your luggage trolleys. In the UK, they're free. They're also garbage, but they're free. He spots a luggage trolley like the ones they have in hotels and grabs it. He reckons there will be some repercussions because it has a big plastic sign on it that says something like "Northwest Airlines only" but he doesn't care.
The next 30 minutes were comical. As soon as he grabs it a cartoonish-looking man hurries over and says in a cartoonish-sounding voice, "You can't use that unless you let me help you." Steve doesn't care. He tells this very round, short, silly-sounding man that he has 3 children and 12 suitcases to take care of. He doesn't mention the 6 carry-ons, 3 carseats, 2 strollers, the wife or the mother-in-law. Maybe he was holding us in reserve in case he needed to pull out the big guns.
Anyway, this little fella helps Steve load up our junk and wheel it over to customs. By this time, the customs people have processed 98% of the other passengers and they're chatting with us. I feel like they just glanced at us, decided we were too crazy to try to pull any fast ones, and let us through. So cartoon-man unloads our stuff onto the customs x-ray conveyor, then loads it up again on the other side. We all march down the long hallway to the place to re-check our bags and he uses his very silly voice to tell people in his way to move. They move. I guess it works having a silly voice.
We pay him $25 for the entertainment value and turn to go to customs. Then Steve realizes we don't have Caleb's carseat. We had checked it through as baggage and didn't use it on the plane. So he heads back down the customs hall and comes back with it a couple of minutes later. Second kid item left behind and remembered by Steve. Way to go, Steve!
Security here is a no-brainer and we breeze through. The thing that holds us up are all the female employees making eyes/faces/noises at Julie. What a little chick magnet.
We are greeted in the Minneapolis airport by McDonalds. So we figure, "When in Rome..." and get the kids some food.
I'll abbreviate the next several hours. We were supposed to leave at 9 something p.m. We didn't get on the plane until after 10:30 (9:30 pm NM time) and didn't take off until 12:30 am. By this time we had all been awake for almost 24 hours. Painful.
The big kids actually fell asleep in the Minneapolis airport. Caleb was on some chairs and Audrey was in Steve's lap. This was the first sleep either one got the whole day. While we were sitting there, the terminal around us filled up with passengers and emptied as flights left twice. I'm still foggy about why our plane was late getting there - maybe something about fog? Ha ha - foggy...fog...
Yeah.
When they announced that they were boarding our flight and that they were taking people who needed extra time first, we were the first 6 people on board. We got those kids in their seats double-quick. Caleb and Audrey had been asleep and we had made them wake up and walk down to the plane. They were 2 little zombies, bless 'em. Audrey, the little darling, said with sleepy eyes firmly closed, "It's a shame there are no TVs on this plane," and we didn't hear anything more from her until NM.
Ready for another weird plane story?
I was in that state of sleep where I *really* wanted to be asleep but I couldn't be as deep in sleep as I desired because of my surroundings. The captain comes on and says that it shouldn't be much longer until we take off, that they just had a few more bags to take care of, then we would head to the de-icing part of the runway (de-icing? This was unsettling to hear) and then take off.
Thirty or so minutes later (I'm not sure because I was asleep-ish), he comes back on and says that he has an "embarrassing" reason we haven't taken off yet: we have no food on the flight, the concession department didn't believe the flight crew about the no food, and when they finally did send a supply truck over for restocking, it was EMPTY.
At this point in my day (going on 25 hours) nothing surprised me.
Finally got in the sky. Uneventful and quiet flight. We land in Albuquerque.
Huge sigh of relief. Times 6.
Now our only problem is how we're going to get our 12 suitcases, 6 carry-ons, 2 strollers and 3 carseats to the hotel. Steve was thinking about calling a cab to take him over to the hotel because our Sequoia is over there. He figures if he can get to the hotel, he can handle the shuttling of the stuff. Problem is, the hotel shuttle stops running at 10:30 pm. It's now 2:00 am. He goes outside to scope out the transportation situation and spots one of those shuttle buses that runs to the privately-owned off-airport parking.
He asks the driver where the taxis usually pick up. The driver shows him, but says that he's going to have a hard time finding a cab at this time of the night/morning because they're all gone. The airport listed our flight arrival as "New Time" but never said what that time was. After a couple of hours, all transportation people figure it's been cancelled (as have so many other flights in and out of Abq. in recent hours apparently) and have gone.
The driver asks Steve where he's heading and Steve tells him our hotel, then happens to mention that he's got 3 kids, 12 suitcases...you know the drill. This wonderful man says, "I'll take you." I'm getting choked up now just remembering it. After he and Steve get everything loaded up and we're all on the shuttle, he says, "I couldn't leave you alone there at this time of night." Mom and I were crying we were so relieved and thankful. He was even wearing a Santa hat.
He gets us to the hotel and helps Steve get all the luggage in. We get checked in and get our stuff upstairs to our room. By now it's about 3am. I'm starving. I decide that we need to go eat at the Waffle House before we put kids back to bed. I figure that they need some food in their tummies to help them sleep. Plus I really want a pecan waffle.
We hop in the Sequoia and are greeted by 2 post-it notes left by Terry when he dropped off the SUV the day before. They bear only 2 words each:
Driver side
Passenger side
That elicited some chuckles from the adults. Steve did remember the correct side of the car to drive on, but had a bit of trouble remembering which side of the road to be on. I think that had more to do with the fact that he was dead tired and it was dark and deserted than anything else.
The Waffle House is an interesting place to eat at any time of day, but it's particularly weird at 3 am. We ate quickly and went back to the hotel, then crashed.
We slept until about 8, when Steve woke us up while on the phone trying to get a rental vehicle. We still had the problem of getting the 3 kids, 12 suitcases, 6 carry-ons etc. back home. But there were no rental cars. The storm that had cancelled the flights had also put a huge demand on the rental places. So we reluctantly called Terry & Gwen to come rescue us. We didn't want them to have to make the trip to Albuquerque just to have to turn around and head back home. After talking with them for a few minutes, Gwen mentioned that another friend of ours from church, Ruth, was on her way to Abq for an appointment and that Ruth would be willing to help with suitcase transport.
Problem solved!
By the time we all got showered and dressed, Ruth was there and Steve loaded half the luggage into her van. She dropped it off at our house later that day.
So we made it home. God was with us the whole 6 months and especially the last 36 hours. I am amazed at the time we spent there, the things we did, and the memories we made. I'm not ready to go anywhere anytime soon, but I'm so thankful for the time we had over there.
Now we're on to more adventures!
