Chad in the rainy season - hills with bushes and trees
My trip home suddenly became a bit less routine about noon today.
Everything was sailing along smoothly, as we arrived on schedule at the Dulles airport in Washington, DC, around 8:30am. I breezed through immigration and customs, then made my way to the United Club lounge, where I made use of a one-time pass I had been given. Since my flight to Charlotte was not scheduled to leave until 5:10pm, I thought this would be a good time to make use of the pass.
It was about 9:30 when I got to the lounge and was granted access for the day. Once inside, I learned that I had complimentary internet access, so I could use the time profitably by sending a few emails, and I was even able to contact Anita via Skype to let her know that I had arrived on American soil. (Oh, did I mention that my cell phone had begun acting weirdly about the time we left North Carolina the beginning of the month to go to the wedding, after which I traveled directly to Africa? Using my cell phone to communicate proved to be a major factor in the "less routine" I mentioned in the opening line of this blog entry.) There was also free food in the lounge, so I didn't have to choose between fasting or buying exorbitantly priced airport food.
Around noon, I received an email notifying me of a change in my flight plans. The flight to Charlotte was being pushed back to 5:47pm. I immediately attempted to communicate this change of plans to Anita via Skype. Passing this info on to the driver of the van from JAARS who was scheduled to pick me up was important because I was one of three people he would be looking for, and I was scheduled to arrive later than either of the other two even before my flight time was delayed. The delay meant that they would all have to wait even longer for me to get there, and I wanted to know if they would actually wait or if they would elect to make a separate trip just to get me or if one of my family members would come and get me instead or ...
An inquiry at an information desk led to the discovery that the reason for the flight delay was that the plane we were scheduled to take to Charlotte would be arriving late at the Dulles airport. And it turned out that, as time went on, that plane's departure (from Dayton, OH) kept getting delayed (for reasons still unknown to me, as those details were not shared), so our departure time got pushed back another 10 minutes after I arrived at the gate where we were scheduled to board our flight.
By that time, being no longer in the lounge, I had no more access to the internet, so could no longer communicate via email or Skype. I was dependent on my crippled cell phone, which unfortunately could not make calls, received incoming calls only sporadically, and sent text messages only after rebooting before each message sent. Incoming messages were received, but often with a 15-minute delay. Add to that the fact that Anita's cell phone, to which I was sending text messages, has limited reception where we live, and you sense the beginnings of the "less routine" I mentioned.
The plane did finally arrive from Dayton, and by that time our departure time had been pushed back to 6:16. However, just as it was landing at the Dulles airport, a thunderstorm began its passage through the area, causing the part of the airport where I was to shut down. By "shut down" I mean that the ground crews were not out doing their thing due to the danger of a lightning strike. So the plane sat near the gate, waiting for a safe time to get people and luggage off the plane. Since the passengers from Dayton couldn't deplane, we naturally were not allowed to board. We were in a "rain delay." Our departure time was revised yet again, this time to 6:34. By this time, the first of the three passengers scheduled for pickup by the JAARS driver at the Charlotte airport had already arrived there, and I was still sitting in Washington, DC!
Long story (somewhat) short, the storm eventually moved on and we did get onto the plane, leaving around 6:45. I attempted, with my crippled phone, to communicate this fact to Anita as I settled into my seat in the plane, but received no confirmation that the message had gotten through. I still didn't know if the JAARS driver was planning to wait for me or if some other plan was in the works.
I turned my phone off while we were in the air--because whatever is wrong with it causes the battery to drain very quickly--and turned it back on once we were on the ground in Charlotte. As we were making our way to the terminal, I got a call from the JAARS driver, wondering what my status was. (At that point, I knew that he had elected to wait for me, so at least I knew whom I was to contact.) At the moment when he called, our plane was stopped somewhere between the runway and the terminal, the pilot having informed us that a number of other planes had been diverted to the Charlotte airport because of bad weather somewhere else, and that our path to the terminal was blocked by some of these planes which had no assigned parking spot. I told my driver that I was unable to make calls with my phone, and he informed me that he did not have texting capability on his phone. So we agreed that I would text Anita, who would then call him, when I was on the curb ready for pickup. That was a great plan, which might have worked well if my phone would have been able to send and receive text messages reliably. But alas, such was apparently not the case.
In the end, however, we got to our gate after a short delay, and I was able to retrieve my bags at baggage claim shortly thereafter. Once I was at the curb, I sent a text message to Anita, letting her know I was ready to be picked up. In the spirit of these multiple delays, however, that message apparently did not make it through, so she never made the call to my driver, who continued to wait with the other two passengers in the cell phone lot, not knowing if our plane had gotten to the gate yet or not. About 20 minutes later, I received a call from Angela, saying that the driver was wondering where I was. (Apparently he had been trying to call me again, but was unable to get through, so he had gotten in touch with Evan, having been unable to reach Anita.)
Angela didn't have the driver's number, but she had Evan call him back. Meanwhile, I received a text message from one of the passengers in the van, so I rebooted my phone and sent him a reply, telling him that I was at the curb, ready for pickup. As if to validate the reality of my cell phone's handicap to the driver and passengers in the van, I received a text message alert as we were exiting the airport. When I looked at it, it was a message sent some 10 minutes earlier from the passenger's phone, saying they were on their way to pick me up. As you might well imagine, there were multiple times during this day where it took a lot of self-control to keep from just crushing my cell phone out of frustration!
On the positive side, I made it safely home, as did all of my luggage. Now my body is adjusting to this new time zone. That will probably take about a week.
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