Home Again, Home Again... Sis-boom-bah

3:00 am, Florence Italy (which is 6 pm in Brush Prairie, Washington). BEEP BEEP BEEP! Alarm time. I’m all packed except for my tooth brush and now it’s time to wake up, get dressed and catch a cab to the airport because I’m goin’ home! So I shuffle around, do my business (which includes picking at a stale piece of cake for breakfast and burning my arm on the kettle) and haul my bags with everyone else in the house, downstairs to wait for a cab. It’s POURING outside… as in biblical, torrential rains complete with lightning and thunder.

4:45 am. Cynthia and climb into a cab and rush rush rush to the airport (Ana and Taya are in a separate cab and between the time Cynthia and I pull out, and we see them in the airport 20 minutes later, they manage to lock themselves out of the building where their bags are still sitting. They push all of the buzzers, get soaked and yelled at by the other tenants, but manage to get their bags and to the airport in the end.) where we get to stand in line until check-in opens.

5:00 am. Check in opens. Our flight is canceled. Too much rain for Florentine air-traffic controllers so it looks like we’re stuck in Florence.

6:45 am. Our flight was scheduled to depart right now and we’re still standing in front of the ticket desk watching Sophie wrangle to get all eleven of us to Portland that same day.

7:30 We have tickets! We’re flying from Florence to Frankfurt, Germany to Denver, Colorado to Portland Oregon. Half of us have boarding passes for Denver, but the other half (including me) don’t, so when we get to Denver, not only do we have to pass through customs and passport control, but we’ve also got to go find out where to pick up our boarding passes… all within an hour. In the mean time, our flight doesn’t board until 9:50 so the airline has given us vouchers for breakfast so we grab a hot drink and a pastry and head to the gate. Carrie and I play gin rummy for a while, then war, then speed and finally we just build houses out of cards on the airport floor.

9:50. We board and then take off for Frankfurt.

12:00. We land in Frankfurt and then get right on a plane to Denver, a long long flight.

4:30 U.S. time. We land in Denver, Colorado. There’s snow and ice everywhere but we’re safe and head to customs to pick up our luggage. The Passport controller gives me a hard time about not knowing where Chehalis is (who DOES know where Chehalis is?! Stupid.) I get through customs (after much hurumphing about my passport picture which really doesn’t look like me) and pick up my bags (all of them made it). Elizabeth forgets her bag and I carry it through further customs after much more hurumphing because it’s not my bag, but they’re swamped with people and I look honest enough I guess so they let me through with a warning or something. But what’s a warning really gonna do if I’m going to steal the bag? Not much, but I wasn’t so it doesn’t really matter. I recheck my bags (with ten minutes to spare from when the plane is supposed to board) and pick up my boarding pass where I hear that the plane has been delayed an hour… which turns into two hours when the next person goes through the same process.
5:00. This gives us plenty of time to take the internal train to the gates (yes, Denver has an indoor train that takes you to different parts of the airport… trippy) and go through yet another security check point. We get to the gate, I call home to tell mummy that I’m going to be delayed and then we check the reader board. The time has gone up to three hours delayed and they’ve switched the gates which isn’t too big a deal because it’s right next to the one we’re at.

6:00 Check the reader board again and see that the plane has been scheduled to board at 6:30 and the gate has been changed to one across the airport. ACROSS THE AIRPORT! And Taya, Stephen and Ana have wandered away to smoke so we haul their luggage to the new gate, track them down and run to board.

7:00 We actually board the plane.

8:00 Our wings get de-iced and we taxi out to the runway.

8:15 We finally take off and have a relatively un-eventful plane ride. I pass out instantly and sit there with my mouth open, snoring for the entire ride.

9:30 We land in Portland. I feel terrible after 27 plus hours of travel and much stressing out. I’ve done something to my shoulder so I can’t really move it, but I see everyone at the gate and all of that doesn’t matter anymore. We’re home.

12:00 pm. I’m home after eating and dropping Dharyll off at his cousin’s house. My faith in the superiority of American mattresses is reaffirmed after I collapse in bed and sleep until 7.