While there should be separate entries for day 18 and day 19, it has become a bit of a blur at this point. The day after the epic bevvy is always painful and this year was no exception. We did see the sun for a few hours before having to deal with things like missing wallets and messed up airline reservations but in the end things settled down, the skies went grey again and all was right with the world. A final barbecue and blether and it was off to bed to face the marathon trip home.
And what an epic trip it was. We managed to get to get up and out promptly and arrived at Edinburgh airport in plenty of time – 2.5 hours before our flight was due to leave. And we needed it! We stood for more than 45 minutes in the United check in line to drop off the bags, then through security, arriving at the gate 10 minutes before boarding began. We boarded promptly, secured our exit row seats (yippee!) and then proceeded to sit on board for nearly an hour while “paperwork” was completed. This was now the 5th flight in a row on this trip that was delayed.
The flight itself was fine albeit a bit cramped – I don’t know how they can consider a 757 a good aircraft for transatlantic flights but they didn’t ask me. I managed to get a fair amount of work done and then we landed in Chicago 30 minutes before our connection to KC was to leave. Another missed connection and another set of pain for rebooking. We used our Global Entry for the first time and sailed through immigration only to wait forever to claim our bags before sailing through customs to recheck the bags. Am I the only one who thinks this is the stupidest arrangement on the planet? I have to walk my bags past the customs agent personally to hand them back over to someone to put on my next flight? Grrrr….
And in this case our next flight was 7 hours away. United had been kind enough to rebook us immediately on the very last flight out of Chicago departing at 10:40 pm and arriving at 12:14 am. So we had a LOT of time to kill in the airport. We wandered for about an hour, dazed and starving, trying to find someplace where I could actually eat more than just a salad. It ended up the Chili’s saved the day and a Margarita Chicken bowl and several drinks with the same name later, we wandered to the gate to sit and wait.
And wait. And wait. I used all the free wifi possible (and 2GB of data) to watch the Royals game and try to pass the time. Finally, as we neared 9:30, they changed the departure gate and we got to trek to another part of the F concourse to sit and…. wait. Our last and final flight of the trip went the way of the previous 5 and was delayed. Only 20 or so minutes instead of an hour and there was no connection to worry about. Our bags had arrived on an earlier flight – figures – so at least we didn’t have to wait for them. Our main worry was about getting home. Can you find an Uber car to come to KCI at 1 am?
Apparently, the answer is yes. Liz, the substitute teacher by day – minivan Uber driver by night, picked us up and delivered us safely home a mere 25 hours after we had begun our day in Barassie. We stumbled up the stairs to bed and I was thankful to have today off to recover.
Now slightly rested, newly styled, with a little bit of fresh food in the fridge (and hopefully none of whatever was smelling so bad when I got up), I can unpack and revel in our “smuggled goods”
and try to remember what life is like when there are alarm clocks, commutes, and commitments. But those tales aren’t for here. If you are interested in the daily activities and random reflections when we aren’t traveling, you’ll need to visit the Cannon Chronicles. We’ll be back with more adventures next year. Thanks for following along.
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