The curse of flight NW43

The word of the day is eventually.

In general, the best thing about travelling is the arrival. That's not to say that process of getting there can't be fun in and of itself, it's just that it certainly wasn't yesterday. Uh, wait, what day is it today?. No not yesterday, but the day before I set out on an excursion to visit Kevin and Mija, meeting up with Simon along the way. It wasn't a complicated trip. Leaving home at 8am we were scheduled to arrive at 3pm central time. We managed to arrive at about 10pm. The next day. A mere 42 or so hours after leaving the house.

Along the way we experienced the delights of queuing, and waiting. It sounds dull, I know, but fortunately the bouts of queuing and waiting were interpersed with further periods of queuing and waiting, which helped break up the monotony.

Here's a quick recap of events.

We were lured into a false sense of security on Friday morning by arriving at the airport and checking in without any difficulties at all.

Once the plane took off, things started to go slightly awry. The plane, which I'm quite certain was in crotchety mood that morning, had decided not to cooperate with the pilot and refused to raise it's landing gear. Despite the pilot's best efforts he announced that he announced that he would be forced to return to Gatwick and land for repairs. Before this could happen, though, the plane would have to dump it's fuel so it could reduced it's weight to something more suitable for landing. Consequently we enjoyed an hours worth of laps around the English Channel before the plane could land.

Upon landing a mechanic was duely summoned and after a while we were told that the plane required a new part and that we'd all have to get off. Amusingly, because we'd taken off, all non-EU citizens were told they'd have to go through customs. This went down about as well as you'd expected.

We disembarked (eventually), collected our baggage (eventually), and were told (eventually) that we'd be put up at an airport hotel. Checking in at the hotel reception proved that fun wasn't over yet. The experience generally involved queuing and gently mocking the poor woman who was assigned to tell all those in the queue that they'd only be waiting for five more minutes.

Having checked in to the hotel, we were promply evacuated from it after the file alarm went off.

Fortunately the rest of the evening was more successful as Simon and I went into to London to find food and entertainment and other events that didn't involved either waiting or queuing.

Getting back to the hotel later than night we discovered that the airline had kindly arranged to open a desk the next morning at 7:30am to inform people what their travel arrangements would now be. Simon and I duely arrived at the desk at 7:30am the following morn and discovered that everyone else had turned up at 6am. We were at the end of a very long and very slow moving queue. Two hours later, we reached the desk. I think it's fair to say that our mood by that point was not as full of cheer as it had been 24hrs previously.

And the day wasn't over yet. We found that our nice and relatively fast direct flight had been substituted for a flight via Detriot which would see us arriving (eventually) at Minneapolis at 8pm (29 hours late if you're keeping count). Of course before we could get on the plane, we had to check in again. The queue for the check in, somewhat amusingly followed near exactly the same path as the queue we'd just been in. By that point I realised that my will to live had been gradually been sapped over the preceeding day and what little supply I had left was near exhausted.

But we soldiered on. Part of the purpose of the trip was to attend Kevin and Mija's Burns supper that evening, at which both Simon and I would be giving speeches (Simon with Immortal Memory and myself with the Toast to the Lassies). By that point, bloodimindedness has set in and the desire to arrive in time to do my part at the party was all that was keeping me going. Especially when we were due to board the flight for the first part of our extended journey and discovered that it had been delayed by an hour due to the plane developing a flat tire. The gods of travel appear to have a sense of humour. More so than the passengers by that point.

But (eventually!) we made it off. And, with but a scant delay at Detriot as customs officers boarded the plane to arrest some poor soul, the rest of journey was entirely uneventful and we did (eventually) manage to arrive at the rescheduled time. Huzzah.

A lift kindly given to us my Mija's father in a car only marginally smaller than the aeroplane in which we arrived ensured that we were able to catch the tail end of the party. Hats off to Kevin and Mija again for the party, which was tremendous fun and which didn't appear to have suffered any for our absence, and appeared to survive our respective speeches as well (which may possibily have had something to do with the copious amounts of whiskey consumed by that point).

Anyway, enough prattle - it's a snowy Sunday morning in Minnesota and enough people are moving about the house now that I shan't feel guilty about getting up and making some noise...