James flew away to Germany today. We're not sure when he'll be coming back.
We got up early this morning to get all the luggage in the car and load up the family and drive down to Chicago so James could catch his plane and we could all say farewell to him.
Naturally, the weather was not being cooperative. We hit a patch of icy road about an hour south, and the lack of grip on the road was unnerving. The car was fish-tailing, so we had to keep it slow for awhile. Sure missed the Subaru! But we managed to make it through.
Once we got past all the snow and ice, I was surprised how easy it was to get to O'Hare and how easy it was to drop off the family at the Departures entry and how easy it was to find a parking spot and how easy it was to then find them again at the ticket counter.
What I had not counted on, of course, was (1) we had misread the maximum weight on the luggage allotment, and were six pounds ($135) overweight; and (2) the difficulty we would experience with the Berlin Air computers when we tried to pay for the overweight luggage. The computers were down. And the baggage had already been sent to the plane. Which meant we had to wait over an hour at the ticket counter until they were able to accept our plastic money.
And we waited.
Thank God for Starbucks! A few cups of coffee and some snacky things kept us from going completely insane.
But we were tired and cranky and not in the mood to take the grand tour of Chicago after James had disappeared from view and it was time for us to leave the airport.
We drove back to the highway and down the road a bit to get our much-delayed lunch, staying in the vicinity of the airport in case something delayed or cancelled the flight. But the flight went off as scheduled, so once we knew he was on his way, we went on our way, too.
Back home. Such a relief to be back home.
Except for the fact that we were already missing James.
We got up early this morning to get all the luggage in the car and load up the family and drive down to Chicago so James could catch his plane and we could all say farewell to him.
Naturally, the weather was not being cooperative. We hit a patch of icy road about an hour south, and the lack of grip on the road was unnerving. The car was fish-tailing, so we had to keep it slow for awhile. Sure missed the Subaru! But we managed to make it through.
Once we got past all the snow and ice, I was surprised how easy it was to get to O'Hare and how easy it was to drop off the family at the Departures entry and how easy it was to find a parking spot and how easy it was to then find them again at the ticket counter.
What I had not counted on, of course, was (1) we had misread the maximum weight on the luggage allotment, and were six pounds ($135) overweight; and (2) the difficulty we would experience with the Berlin Air computers when we tried to pay for the overweight luggage. The computers were down. And the baggage had already been sent to the plane. Which meant we had to wait over an hour at the ticket counter until they were able to accept our plastic money.
And we waited.
Thank God for Starbucks! A few cups of coffee and some snacky things kept us from going completely insane.
But we were tired and cranky and not in the mood to take the grand tour of Chicago after James had disappeared from view and it was time for us to leave the airport.
We drove back to the highway and down the road a bit to get our much-delayed lunch, staying in the vicinity of the airport in case something delayed or cancelled the flight. But the flight went off as scheduled, so once we knew he was on his way, we went on our way, too.
Back home. Such a relief to be back home.
Except for the fact that we were already missing James.
2 comments:
These messages surely are slow sometimes. It has taken a month for this to get to Texas.
That's because I type so slow!
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