A Trip to Remember (3.5 & 4 - the conclusion)

So this is actually still the third day, but when flying internationally the days really run together.

As I mentioned at the end of the Day 3 post, we were all spread out throughout the plane from London to Philadelphia, so periodically one of the kids or I would walk up toward Kim to check on her. Apparently the guy sitting next to Kim did not appreciate us coming up there and having the kids talk over Kim to check on their mom.

The flight itself was relatively uneventful, after I had a talk with Caleb informing him that he could not race back and forth in the aisle even if he "is just checking on Mom". Every time Kim came by she was grimacing, really wincing in pain but toughing it out knowing that being on this plane meant seeing family soon.

Upon landing, a BA employee quickly noticed that Kim was in need of assistance and requested a wheelchair for her. A friendly man met us at the gate and took Kim and us to the baggage claim, where we waited for our five suitcases and three car seats to appear. It didn't take long for four of our suitcases to come, but the last suitcase (Carli's) and three car seats never arrived. With the help of the wheelchair man, we went through Customs and then to the BA counter to report our missing bags and reschedule our last flight to Pittsburgh.

The woman behind the BA counter was very helpful and friendly and took care of scheduling our missing suitcase and car seats to be delivered to Kim's grandparent's house, but she was not able to help us with our last flight and sent us down a few counters to the US Airways woman. (Our last flight was a US Airways flight.) The woman at the US Airways counter was not as helpful and did not understand whether we already had a ticket or were requesting a ticket. Though she finally understood that we simply wanted her to get us on the next flight to Pittsburgh, she contended that we had no ticket and should be giving her a ticket in order to get a boarding pass.  Eventually, we went upstairs and talked to another man from BA that helped us and printed a pseudo boarding pass for us but told us that we would need to get the actual boarding passes from a different US Airways person, which we could do by walking two terminals down. By this point, it was after 9:00 PM and Kim had already decided that she would rather stay the night in a hotel at the airport and fly in the morning than try to catch a flight out to Pittsburgh that night even though that meant completely missing her grandma's surprise birthday party. So, we decided we would head to the hotel and deal with the boarding passes in the morning; the flight didn't leave until after 9:00 AM anyway.

So the kids and I tried to push Mom in her wheelchair and luggage cart with all of our suitcases on it outside the airport and across the street to the hotel. After getting on to Caleb for getting too close to the road with the luggage explaining that he could possibly tip the cart over and constantly cautioning Carli to be careful pushing Kim, I took over with the luggage and promptly dumped it on the ground (eating my own words to Caleb). Finally, we made it into the hotel and into our room for the night. We all crashed worn out from our international flight, not to mention time at airline counters and pushing luggage and Kim in the wheelchair.

The next morning Sunday we woke up and headed over to the airport after everyone had the chance to shower and finally change their clothes for the first time since Thursday (except Carli, of course). At the US Airways counter, we met Tina, a woman who like her colleague from the night before did not understand whether we needed tickets or already had tickets. Once she finally understood, she couldn't understand why we had not called to let US Airways know we would not make our Thursday flight due to my wife having to be taken off the plane in a foreign country to a hospital for an emergency appendectomy, during which time I had lost my phone and the only phone calls we even made were either to her mother or local calls that themselves had to be "authorized". Though I tried to explain, it was clear she had never had been to Hillingdon Hospital without her cell phone and probably had never experienced any type of emergency while travelling. She was less than sympathetic and basically told us we would have to buy new tickets if we wanted to fly to Pittsburgh. The tickets had been declared "no value" (whatever that means), and she was convinced that the travel agent had done this and was the only person who could reverse it such that we could use our previously purchased tickets to fly to Pittsburgh. So, we got out of line and Kim, sitting in her wheelchair, called her parents and the travel agent. With the help of the travel agent, who confirmed our suspicion that the woman behind the counter had no idea what she was talking about, and my father-in-law the situation was resolved (perhaps requiring new tickets - not sure on that still). Anyway, we went to a different woman a few counters down and finally received boarding passes, but only after paying for our bags. (An interesting side note: As I was paying for our bags, I heard a woman down by Tina's counter say, "Is your name Tina?" Walking away from the woman, I heard Tina respond, "Yes it is and I'm doing just fine." Immediately after that, the woman at the counter picked up and ink pen and hurled it against the back wall where Tina had previously been standing and stormed off with her daughter. Obviously Tina did not read that book on how to win friends and influence people.)

The flight to Pittsburgh did not take too long, and a woman took as at the gate on the supersized golf cart like car, which the kids loved and Kim appreciated, to the wheelchair area where a woman pushed Kim toward the Baggage Claim area. There we saw Kim's sister Kari and her dad waiting on us. What a joy it was to see familiar faces and have help picking up our luggage and making the last leg of our trip - the 45 minute drive to Cadiz, OH. We finally arrived to our destination around 12:30 PM on Sunday!

Though this is the official conclusion to the story, I plan to share some retrospective and concluding thoughts in my next post.