Sunday’s breakfast buffet is pretty much the same as Saturday’s, except that the hotel decided to confuse us by moving it to another room on a different floor.
After breakfast we were told to meet in the lobby at 11am for our ride to the airport. The official recommendation has always been to show up for flights two hours early. So why do we have to convene over four hours before flight time?
The airline representative muttered something about “safety reasons.” Our theory is that the hotel wants us out by 11. Had he been forthcoming enough to tell us so, we would have understood and grudgingly accepted that explanation. We do not understand how loitering in the airport for three hours is supposed to make us more safe.
Today, the line at the check-in counter is long and sluggish. After getting our boarding passes we went upstairs for lunch.
At the security checkpoint we were rudely introduced to some of our fellow passengers. One group tried to pass us in line. Another person barged into the middle of a conversation we were having with a security agent, who expressed his amazement over how some people “fail to grasp the concept of a queue, or a line.”
Where did the time go? As we cleared security, it’s almost 3 o’clock and our plane is on the board as “last call” at gate 31. There’s a long line for the final checkpoint at the gate, and we found a place to sit in the last holding corral.
It wasn’t long before we were summoned through the cattle chute and onto the plane. We note that each of our plane’s engines has its cover securely in place, and that there are no grease monkeys in the area.
Given the events of the last few days, we’re a bit more apprehensive than usual about this take-off. Having our plane leave the gate, taxi to the end of the runway, and queue up behind the other planes waiting to take off, our return home is feeling closer to reality.
Every seat is filled, and the overhead compartments are packed as tightly as the mammoth suitcases that fill the cargo hold. It never ceases to amaze us how they can get all of that weight off the ground, but our plane finally left the ground and started toward Chicago.
It’s already dark outside, even though it’s not even 4 o’clock yet. Our plane took a lap around London and turned toward the northwest, and a vast sea of city lights filled our windows.
We finally have time to read the Sunday paper we bought this morning, and to catch up on writing our stories. The inside of this plane is laid out like a movie theatre, with a big screen on the wall in front. We’ve been treated to some second-rate entertainment on that screen. There was the silly American movie “Legally Blonde,” and an Indian teevee show that looked like it came from the suburbs of Bollywood.
In between, the screen would show us our flight status. There’s a big map of the world with our route drawn onto it. A little icon of an airplane shows our current position. It tells us how fast we were going, how high up we are, how cold it was outside, and many other things we might (but probably don’t) want to know.
Obbie was restless and had a hard time sleeping. Once an hour or so he’d take a lap around the plane to stretch his legs, stopping at each of the doors to look out the window. On one side of the plane, the sun left a barely detectable red glow on the distant horizon. On the other side of the plane, the rising full moon was just high enough to illuminate whatever happened to be below us.
Approaching the coast of Greenland, we see dark low clouds widely scattered over the glimmering ocean water. Half an hour later, we see the white peaks of glaciers and snow-covered mountains rising toward us. We are deprived of daylight for the entire flight, but the moonlight is giving us a memorable view of the arctic landscape.
Somewhere between Greenland and lower Hudson Bay the lights came on and the food came out. By the time we finished eating and the flight attendants cleaned up the mess, we were somewhere north of Lake Superior.
We’re still about two hours from landing, but at least we’re over our own continent. South of Traverse City we started descending and our ears started popping. We know that some ear-popping is normal, but this bout of ear-popping was pretty severe. We started seeing lights again over Milwaukee, and our wheels were on the ground at 6:45pm Chicago time.
We’re still on the runway as overhead compartments are popping open and people are bolting down the aisle toward the door. The flight attendants have their hands full getting everybody back into their seats and keeping them there until we’re at our gate.
Once the plane stopped moving, all hopes of an orderly exit vanished. We put on our coats, grabbed our small bags, and stood in the aisle. Eventually everyone in front of us will extract their stuff from the overhead compartments and start moving.
The cattle chute from the plane delivered us to a series of walkways and corridors. Eventually we came to a big room labelled “Immigration.” (That’s what the Brits called “Passport Control.”) There was one line for US citizens, and about ten lines for everybody else.
Most of our plane was mobbing the “everybody else” lines. There was no wait for “US citizens”. The bored and lonely agent flipped through our passports, stamped the last page, and handed them back to us with a “Welcome home.”
Not many other people had cleared immigration by the time the baggage carousel started moving. Obbie’s pack showed up right away, but one end of the waist strap was torn loose from the body of the pack. Since a shoulder strap is attached to each end of the waist strap, that pack will have only one functioning shoulder strap for the rest of the trip.
We waited a long time for Rozie’s pack. Meanwhile, tiny Indian women are reaching for bags twice their size on the carousel. The weight of two or three other bags always seem to keep the target pinned into position, and it would escape for another lap around the carousel.
The clang of pots and pans came from one case landing on the carousel. We feel like we’re traveling with a plane load of refugees. Maybe we are.
Rozie’s pack finally showed up, so the baggage claim ordeal is behind us. Now we must face the customs ordeal. On the plane we’d been given a form to fill out. We had to list all the countries we’d visited, and make an inventory of all the loot we were bringing back from those countries.
At customs, the agent took the form from us, said “thank you,” and sent us on our way.
Somewhere between the plane and baggage claim we’d latched onto a baggage cart (now that we’re in the USA, “trolleys” are now “baggage carts”), and with one of our packs out of order we plan on clinging to that cart as long as possible.
At this point it’s 8:30 in Chicago, or 2:30am in London, so we’re getting tired and cranky. An automated train brings us to the other side of the airport where the ‘El’ station is. After a long corridor, an escalator marks the end of the line for our trolley (uh, baggage cart), but we still have to deal with another half-mile of corridor.
We finally got to the station and found the ticket machines. Fare is $1.50 … no change given. We have plenty of American money, but all we have are 20’s. There’s no change machine in sight.
Obbie has to scramble back to find change while Rozie stands watch over our packs. We got on the train a bit steamed about needing exact change to buy a transit ticket in the airport.
The ticket dispensers in the London Underground were wonderful. In New York you can buy subway tokens from a human in a bullet-proof booth. Chicago can’t be more dangerous than New York, can it?
Our train sat still in the airport station for another ten minutes. But since we were on the train, we were no longer in the airport world.
Studying the system map posted in our car, we noticed the similarities with the London Underground map we were working from yesterday. Between Chicago, New York, London and Paris, the design of the rail transit maps is pretty consistent. Once you’ve learned to read one city’s map, it’s pretty easy to figure out the others.
We retraced our steps from September, getting off the Blue line in the loop and taking a Red line train to the North side. The smell of the breeze off Lake Michigan felt familiar as we walked from the station to our motel.
As we get to bed at around midnight, we’ve been up for 22 hours. Today felt like two days, one in London and one in Chicago.
If all goes well, we’ll be in our own beds at this time tomorrow.