Champaign County

Yesterday was travel day from hell, but we are home!

First, the fire alarm in the Marriott started going off at 2:30 in the morning and it kept on going off and on intermittently till our 4 am wake up call. By 4:30 we were out of the hotel and on the way to the airport, so I don’t know how long it kept on beeping.

The one real high point of the day was that I ran into an old UI student of mine (graduation class 2009), who has moved to Lisbon with her husband and settled there permanently. She practices law remotely with a Texas firm, and her husband does something tech related. We had a great catch-up and promised that if I make it back next year, we will get together.

That was the end of the fun. The flight from Lisbon to London was late, reducing our transfer time to 1 hour and 10 minutes. The very helpful BA flight attendant insisted Joe needed assistance, though I knew he was quite capable of walking it and am not sure why I went along with this. But it meant we had to wait till the plane emptied to deplane, only to find that the “buggy” he had ordered was not there. It arrived a few minutes later, and the driver then told us that the buggy could only take us to the spot where we had to go upstairs to go through security again. So we in essence waited 20 minutes for a 3 minute buggy ride, which would have taken Joe no more than 10, in my estimation. The line was snaking at security, but we jumped to the front. Joe and I go through different lines and for some reason his shoes had to come off while mine didn’t. And then he couldn’t find where his shoes had gone! Then rush down two levels, which are not connected by the same elevator, to get to the level for the shuttle which would take us close to our gate. As we were waiting for the shuttle, I saw that our flight was flashing “final boarding,” which made my heart sink. But I am glad we didn’t just call it quits. At that point, the shuttle arrived and emptied out, but they had to do the “security check”, a manual inspection of all five cars, which took another several minutes. We got to the gate as the agent was actually closing the first boarding door. BUT… the very nice woman called the people at the second door (a floor down from the main entrance) and told them to hold it for a few minutes. As we showed our boarding passes, mine triggered a random extra security search. But since they assured me that we were through and would make the flight, those few extra minutes just gave us time to catch our breath and look less frazzled when we actually boarded. We had not done a Heathrow transfer in many years, and you can be sure I will now avoid it at all costs.

Once we sat down, and the doors closed, nothing happened. About 15 minutes later, a very apologetic and polite British voice told us that the refrigeration system for the food wasn’t working, and they had to order some dry ice as a substitute. And then of course the mechanics had to fill out several maintenance forms, etc etc. So as a result, our flight was more than an hour late. I will say though, that the food we got was several orders of magnitude more edible than what we have had recently on American or Iberia. We even had an “afternoon tea” before touchdown, clotted cream included.

Note to self: Do not arrive in Chicago’s international arrivals on the weekend before Thanksgiving. The lines were horrendous, the luggage pick-up and drop-off area just chaotic, and the train back to the main terminal crushed worse than the sardines I brought back from Lisbon. Getting through security was another ordeal, slower than molasses, but finally we got through, only to learn that our Champaign flight would be delayed by about an hour. At that point, we just shrugged and figured the worse was over. And we are now home!Read more