HOMECOMING

Our flight home was really a kind of comedy of if not errors, than just basically screwed up.

For starters, we had checked and double checked with Grand Circle to be sure they had ordered a wheelchair for Zoe, which allows her to navigate the airport AND breathe, and also allowed her to hold my Volkswagen-size backpack so I don’t have to carry it on my bum shoulder. And yes, I know

I could take less stuff with me and then it wouldn’t be so heavy, but I can’t stand to travel without my computer.

First of all, the airport shuttle let us off at a door marked Air France, but the ticket counter where we were supposed to check in was 6 counters away. A long walk for Zoe. First off, our Grand Circle guide didn’t bother to tell us until we were half checked in at the kiosks that we weren’t supposed to check in there, then she starts us on a double-time forced march down to counter 10. She’d get about 20 feet ahead of us and then act like we were purposely slowing her down. We kept gasping wheelchair, wheelchair. Finally she stopped at a place where there were four wheelchairs and two pushers. There was a lot of negotiating in French that I couldn’t follow, but the ultimate answer was "Non."

When we got to the counter, she abruptly handed us off to someone and told us to "stand in this line, someone will help you." The person in front of us in this line turned around and said, "you should really go to another counter, because I’m going to be awhile."

I thought we shouldn’t but Zoe said she was going to act like a pushy New Yorker and went over to the other counter where they helped us. But still, the wheelchair thing was screwed up. The counter person said, "Do you want the wheelchair now?" I’m being very polite and not saying DUH.

"Okay, then, go over there to the right and wait. Someone will be there." After 20 minutes, nobody was there, so we decided to walk, since she can manage a good distance at a slow pace. On the way, we passed the same four wheelchairs with the same two pushers plus one more, still apparently on their café break, or perhaps they were on strike. We asked again and got the same answer, "Non." By then we had found a baby stroller and put our carry-ons on it and tried to get to the security area with that – also trying to explain to the guard about the wheelchair, etc. Again, the answer was "Non."

Eventually we made it through immigration and security, and only after we left there did we realize that I no longer had Zoe’s cane. I went back to security, but it wasn’t there. I should have gone back through security at that point, because I knew I had it when I was at immigration, because I had been using it all the time we were in a line to keep a certain ambitious person from crowding in front of us every time we went around a corner.

After we went to wait at our gate, I decided to give it one more try, and actually went back out through security and got someone to go on the other side of immigration and search for me, but it was gone. Probably that girl I had kept at bay with it realized what a good tool it was and took it for her own purposes.

Nice flight. Delicious food on Air France. I watched five movies, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Iron Lady, My Week with Marilyn, something about people’s time running out, and a cute French movie about warring children in adjoining villages in about the 60s.

Arrival in SF. Hallelujah! The wheelchair is waiting for us. Except there are 7 passengers who need wheelchairs, 6 wheelchairs, and 2 people to push them. They solve this problem by pushing two at a time about 50 feet, then going back and getting the next two, then going back and getting the next two, then going back and getting the last person. Then they do the next 50 feet the same way. They do this about 6 times before we get to immigration.

Then they line them up in the line closest to the door, which was marked for US citizens but since there are many more foreigners in the hall by the time the wheelchair choo choo is complete and they could possibly start moving up to the window, they have allowed a group of 30 foreigners, all single students, it appears to me, to move over to this window. Based on the time it took to process them, they were apparently all suspected terrorists.

The upshot of all this is that while our flight was only 11 hours, maybe even 10 hours and 40 minutes, by the time we got to the car it was after 3, so we had to drive home in SF traffic, and it was 22 hours from getting up to getting home.

  Also, while I was away, the modem/router for the computer died, so all the effort I had put into getting John an iPad and having him get comfortable with email all went away because there was no signal in the house.

I would have pulled my hair out if I had been without my daily/hourly/minutely internet fix, but he did manage to eventually go down to the library and use it there.

I called ATT and went through the usual threats and promises and eventually got them to agree to give me a new one for the cost of shipping, so I saved about $85 there. That’s on the good side. On the bad side, I won’t get it until next week, which means I’ll spend all the money I saved buying coffee so I can use the internet six times a day. 

Maybe I need to learn to live without my computer.  Noooooooooooooooooo!!!