Back on Terra Firma...Thank CHRIST!!

OK, so I covered the most important aspect of the Croatia trip, which was, of course, the engagement. (By the way, we brought the ring over to Shreve, Crump and Low today and I will have the ring resized in just two weeks!)

Before I go on and chronicle the events of the fabulous trip, I HAVE to share the details of my return trip with you. This story is so F'd up that honestly, if you were telling it to me, I would simply not believe you.

We heard about the London terror plot one morning as we watched BBC World on our blessed satellite TV in the room. We were shocked! There are no direct flights to Dubrovnik from Boston, but there are any number of major cities through which the transatlantic connection can be made. Paris, Milan, Rome, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dublin..you get my picture. In the past, Stephen and I have traveled through any number of these cities to get ourselves to and from Europe. However, I've found myself disappointed with the big European carriers in my past trips. (Air France and Al Italia, in particular, are complete CRAP!)
I insisted, therefore, this time, that we travel either on American Airlines, or British Airways. We ended up with the best of both worlds as we booked flights through American Airlines, but the overseas portions of the trip would be operated by British Airways. Awesome.

This, of course, meant connections through the UK.

Naturally, when we saw the news of the terror plot, we were pretty horrified.

We called American Airlines to see if we could reroute our return through another major transatlantic connection. No go. Cheaptickets.com, through whom we had purchased or tickets and INSURANCE, refused to help us, telling us, "We can't seem to find your reservations." This even as I was looking at my reservations on the "my trips" section of their website.

So anyway, we resigned ourselves to travel through London. Every day we saw reports of massive security check lines. We understood that we might not even be able to take carry on luggage. We knew there would be no liquids, gels, cosmetics, etc. We knew that we stood a very good chance of having flight cancellations to suffer, interminable waits in lines, missed connection flights because of said waits, etc. We were prepared.

When we got to Dubrovnik Airport, we were shocked when they said they could check our luggage all the way through to Boston. On the way over, they had checked it to Manchester, but then made us pick it up to take it through security. Surely, we thought, they would make us pick up the bags in Manchester again (our flight pattern was Dubrovnik, Manchester, London, Boston) to thoroughly check it through England.

Score one for us.

We arrive at Manchester, expecting massive security measurs to be in place.

Nothing.

Some guy asked us to fill out a "landing card" which essentially asked our names, where we were flying to, and for a signature. He took a picture of us and then asked us whether we had any gel, liquids or cosmetics in our bags. We said no and this was good enough for him.

We proceeded to our gate without another ounce of security to deal with.

We braced ourselves for the worst in London. Like you here, we had seen the photos. We had seen the lines. We had heard that American-bound passangers would go through at least 2 check lines, each of which would last at least 90 minutes. We were prepared to sack out for the night in the airport as we only had a 90 minute layover.

We arrive at Heathro, deplane, and begin making our way to our terminal. With each corner we turned, we were expecting to encounter the endless security lines.

Nothing.

We walked right to our gate, where some elderly Indian woman patted me down (I'm not even sure if she was an airport employee, come to think of it), and asked me to remove my shoes, which she then very officially rubbed with a cotton ball that the promptly threw away.

That was the extent of the security. Oh yeah, and they unzipped my bag, all the while looking straight at me and asking me if I had liquid or gel. When I said no, they zipped my bag back up (never having looked inside) and told me to go sit and wait.

As you can see, the whole process was very exhaustive.

Anyway, it is best if I just give you the time chronicle of events from this point forward.

6:05 PM (England, 1:00 PM Boston) -- flight is scheduled to take off.

6:15 PM England (1:15 PM Boston) --They BEGIN boarding the aircraft.

6:30 PM UK (1:30 Boston) --surprisingly the seating of the passangers is complete. I think this is because you didn't have people carrying in entire sets of luggage as "carry-ons."

6:30-7:20 PM UK (1:30- 2:20 PM Boston) --Aircraft sits idle on the runway with no clarification from the captain as to the reason for the delay.

7:20 PM UK (2:20 PM Boston) -- We begin to taxi down the runway, but are told that we are 46th in line to get take off clearance.

8:00 PM UK (3:00 PM Boston) -- We take off. (We had been told that our flight would arrive in Boston ten minutes ahead of schedule, but we are now already nearly 2 hours behind schedule!)

10:00 PM UK (5:00 Boston) - - I am at the back of the plane, waiting to use the can, when I see a few stewardesses going over to a passanger who was ill. She looked to be around 13. One of the stewardesses came to the back and I asked her what was wrong with the kid. She said that kid had been in the airport for nearly 11 hours (cancelled flight) and had eaten only one slice of pizza. She then took several diet pills containing ephedra and was now sick. Gee, ya think!!!!

11:00 PM UK (5:00 PM Boston) -- We have, if all goes well, 3.5 hours left to fly) The pilot asks if a certified medical professional on board would be willing to step forward and help an ill patient. An elderly woman makes her way to the first class section (where they have now moved this girl and her entire family) to lend a hand.

1:00 AM UK (8:00 PM Boston)--The flight monitor tells us that we have just under 90 minutes until we land in Boston. We are practically doing a dance of joy. The pilot interrupts our celebration by announcing that we have to make an emergency medical landing in Halifax Nova Scotia, Canada, which is a stone's throw from Boston.

1:30 AM UK (8:30 Boston time) we land in Halifax and sit there for nearly FIVE HOURS while the following events take place.

1. The paramedics spend an extended amount of time on board treating the diet pill girl before taking her off the aircraft.

2. The pilot announces that the family's bags will need to be removed from the cargo hold as it is illegal to knowingly travel with bags known not to belong to anybody presently on board. Also, in light of security issues, it was best to remove it. This alone took nearly 2 hours. The pilot announced, eventually, after the first 90 minutes of searching, that London would be contacted to tell them exactly which bin the luggage had been placed into. After an additional half hour, the bags were found and removed. TWO HOURS!!!

3. The plane was, very slowly indeed, refueled.

4. The pilot announced that the vehicle which came out to refuel the plane (picture someting high, like a cherry picker) and faulty brakes and that the driver lost control of the vehicle, causing it to crash into the plane wing and damage the thing!

5. Canadian immigration authorities announce that they do not want us in the airport terminal and will not accept us. We were therefore stuck in the plane.

6. The pilot tells us that we will have a plane come specially from NY to Nova Scotia to pick us up and take us to Boston. The caveat is that it will be another 5 hours before the plane arrives.

I swear to God, if it weren't for people getting arrested and crap for losing their minds on planes, I think there would have been a mutiny.

7. Mercifully, that plan was not put into effect because some repair crew from Air Canada came over and fixed the wing and sent us on our way.

Jesus, I was ready to stick my arms out the window and start flapping at that point.

I don't know what the Uk Boston times were at that point. All I know is that we were meant to land in Boston at 8:30 PM Boston time and we didn't arrive in Boston until 1: 30 AM. So, our 6 hour flight turned into a 13 hour hellish ordeal!

Naturally, my bags were among the very last to emerge at the baggage claim and we had to wait almost a half hour to get a cab home.

But we didn't care.

We were out of that godforsaken plane!!!