Spain/China 2023, continuing (43)

[aadler]

The long trip home – August 09 Wednesday

During the flight, I couldn’t sleep, despite how long ago I’d got out of bed. Instead I watched movies: “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, “the Tunnel to Summer, the End of Goodbyes”, “Guardians of the Galaxy 3”, and “Renfield”.

We landed at Frankfurt at 6:57AM (which would be 12:57PM China time). We were apparently on a VERY short connection, because the wheelchair attendant practically ran us from our arrival gate to our departure gate; in fact, she flagged down a motorized cart and had the driver take us and our luggage to security while she did run to keep up with the empty wheelchair. In my opinion, the rush was unnecessary; the flight took close to an hour to load after we’d got aboard, and that was after Susan had been pulled aside for a random security check. The two of us did get to board first, though … and the flight wasn’t full, so each of us had an empty seat next to us. (We were on opposite aisle seats.) The plane left the gate at 8:35AM, took off 20 minutes later.

Again I couldn’t sleep. For some reason, this flight didn’t hand out headphones, and I wasn’t interested in watching a movie without sound (or playing it loud enough that it might annoy nearby passengers), so I watched multiple episodes of Young Shelson with the captions turned on. We landed in Chicago O’Hare about 10:20AM U.S. Central time.

Wheelchair attendance again at the airport. We got all our other baggage on through security and re-checked, but established that the wheelchair we’d checked in at the door of the plane, in Hong Kong, was officially showing as still in Hong Kong.

We got delivered to the correct gate for our final flight home. An hour or so later, the flight was transferred to a different gate, and Susan had to make the trip without help because the follow-up associate (with a follow-up wheelchair) wasn’t available yet. Finally, personnel arrived to man the gate, and Susan got her help with time to spare. She and I were, again, the first on the plane, and it took off at 3:57PM U.S. Central time, landed at 5:30PM on the dot.

(Okay, quick breakdown: China, being on the opposite side of the globe, is 13 hours ahead of the Central United States. That means our 12:14AM takeoff, August 9th, would have been just past noon on the 8th in the States. So, landing in our home state at 5:30PM on the 9th means it took us just under 30 hours to get that far. Not too bad … but neither of us had slept, beyond a couple of half-hour dozes, since 8:30AM on the 8th. We were feeling it by this point.)

Yes, wheelchair assistance again at the airport, and picked up our luggage. We filed a report at the United desk regarding Susan’s wheelchair, were told they would contact us as soon as they got it to our state and could deliver it.

Susan called for a taxi, but the only one close enough had a previous fare to pick up, and it would be an hour before he got back from that. She tried Uber instead, and was happy to find a driver actually at the airport. He picked us up — his vehicle was relatively small, so our carry-on bags had to go in his front seat — and Susan talked with him on the drive to the RV park where we’re currently set up. He’d already heard about our situation, and offered to see if he could give us a battery boost himself.

I tried the ignition first … and, no, it wasn’t budging. He connected his battery to our RV engine battery with booster cables, and with one thing and another we spent more than half an hour trying to get it to do anything more than grunt at us, but never could get it to budge. I gave him an extra $14 (my available change) for his trouble, and since nothing was happening today and we were tired, Susan and I drove to a nearby hotel and rented a room for the night.

Nice, soft beds, welcome after 30-some hours in airplane and airport seats. I did drive-through at the McDonalds next door, and that was our dinner. Susan watched just a little television, then we both went to bed.