The (hellish) journey (day 1)

The pre-vacation butterflies fluttered in our stomachs, as we packed the suitcases in the car. Feeling like a million dollars (or euros in my case) I dropped the key off with our neighbors, so that they can take care of Raistlin and Shenanigans (our cats) for two weeks.

“Are you leaving today?” the neighbor asked.

“Hopefully,” we said, still giddy. When she looked at us like water was burning, we explained that we were going to fly standby, which means we don’t have guaranteed seats.

“How adventurous,” said our neighbor, with pity on her face. Suddenly it hit me… we might not be flying at all today. The hotels we booked… the car… everything could still go horribly wrong. Suddenly I felt quite scared. My instincts told me I was flying today, but my brain was trying to caution me.

Luckily, I didn’t have a lot of time to fret, we needed to pick up sweets for the trip, and then it was time to pick up Elora. I ended up treating myself to a nice summer dress that I happened to see in the shop window. *grin*

Feeling giddy again, we waited at Elora’s school. She came out looking like she just swallowed a lemon, and started to complain about how unfair her teacher was.

“Would it make your day better if we would go to the airport today?” I asked innocently. Her face instantly lit up.

“We’re going on vacation today, not tomorrow?”

“We don’t know yet,” I cautioned. “It depends if there are spaces in the plane.”

The mood was pretty good on the way to the airport, and we picked up a colleague of Daan who was going to borrow Daan’s car for the duration of the vacation. We were making plans what to do, just in case we couldn’t go on the flight, and I got that sinking feeling again.

Things didn’t improve when we made it to the airport. The ladies behind the desk told us with solemn faces there were 0 empty seats. It would all depend on people not showing up for the flight. There was still a chance, and at least the flight wasn’t overbooked, but secretly I was already picturing us going home at the end of the day.

My worry was infectious, and Elora picked up on it. When I’m stressed I’m usually very solemn, and the last thing I can handle is people asking me a thousand questions. When Elora gets stressed, she asks a thousand questions. Thank god Daan was a lot more level headed, because Elora and I were getting on each other’s nerves.

We watched the clock for 3 hours, the minutes seemed to crawl by. I had bribed Elora into distraction with a book of horse stickers, and I had to admit, she was truly being a trooper. During the pre-boarding everyone got to go through security, except us. We had to sit around the corner and wait to hear if we could go or not. We speculated when they would know. Maybe 45 minutes beforehand? When the check in would close? But we weren’t that lucky. Little over 15 minutes before the flight was about to take off, we finally got the word… WE COULD GO!!

The seats weren’t next to each other, but we were too elated to care about that. When we entered the tube leading to the plane, Elora expressed her concern about that, she was scared to sit alone, and we promised her we’d try to get seats together.

In the end we didn’t get seats together, but Elora didn’t mind. She got to sit next to two girls that she liked. A very nice lady across the isle from her wanted to change seats with us, so we at least were sort of sitting next to her. Daan would take Elora duty the first half of the journey, and I the second.

That’s when my 4 ½ hours of insanity began.

There is always one person that’s completely bonkers… and for some reason I often end up sitting next to them. This trip was no exception. Next to me were an elderly couple. I don’t know where they were from, or if they spoke proper English (I did hear him speak once, and I heard English words, but I couldn’t hear what he was on about, so maybe he only knew a few words).

The guy on the other side of them made a valiant effort to speak to them, but all they did was glower at him, so he sort of gave up and pretended he was invisible for the rest of the flight. I haven’t seen either of them crack even so much as a smile.

The man, in particular, was truly marching to the beat of his own drum. And the drum was obviously crafted by Dr Seuss. He didn’t have a lot of respect for personal body space, which turns out, is probably one of the biggest pet peeves in my life (judging by my slowly rising rage)

He was the size of a large smurf, and yet he felt the need to totally take up my tiny little bit of the airplane space. I wanted to scream: “Dude, I’m five times your height…. Get your feet out of my leg space.” But I’m one of those people that can’t just explode at strangers like that, unless they’re hurting someone else. If it’s just me suffering, I usually let it go.

I’m hyper sensitive, so nudging me consistently in the side is pretty much like Chinese water torture to me, and will eventually drive me insane. I cleverly decided to stuff my pillow in between us, to numb the movement a little… but the little man only took this as an invitation to rest his arm on my pillow and thus lean even further to my side. He either sat with his legs spread so far, that it would make the average Olymic gymnasts jealous, or he would just blatantly place his feet under the chair in front of ME.

When dinner came (in delightful Dutch themed packaging), I couldn’t help but fantasize stabbing my plastic fork in his leg.

After 4 ½ hours I had had enough. It was Daan’s turn to deal with him. Daan told me I was silly for putting up so long with it, and he didn’t care. Apparently they leaned on each other for the rest of the trip (wresting for the arm rest) and they both fell asleep. I laughed hysterically at this, when Daan told me.

Elora loved that I sat next to her. She was so freaking amazing. The whole trip she really was the brave little toaster. She barely slept, and I could see how tired she was. We would sometimes hold hands across the isle, and it was adorable. She watched movies, and was a little clumsy at times, but she was darling, and I was so proud.

I didn’t do so well. The stress of the day, mixed with the fatigue of not sleeping several nights, resulted in severe stomach cramps. I could barely eat the breakfast meal. The flight, which was supposed to last 8 ½ hours, was actually extended for almost a full hour, and that didn’t help either. I was in a lot of pain. Daan noticed this, and though I tried to put on my brave face, my skin had turned fifty shades of green, and it was difficult hiding it.

It was an utter relief to land, and I wanted to get out of the airport as soon as possible.

But my plan was foiled by the torture device known as Atlanta Airport customs. Nothing improves a mood like standing in line for an hour and a half, watching people be utterly incompetent, while you feel sick as a dog. It’s especially fun with an 8 year old who is starting to lose the plot a little. By the end she was half walking half crawling. It was a pitiful sight.

To my horror, I realized I had to vomit. Mortified, I ran to the toilet, which was about 80 miles away from where we were standing (well… it felt like 80 miles) I actually had to duck under a whole lot of ‘row-lint-thingies’ (I have no idea what that stuff is called) and each time I did, I was freaking amazed I didn’t toss my cookies right there. I think I deserve some sort of medal for this. It was insane.

In the bathroom I had a huge scare, because for a second I thought I was vomiting up nothing but blood… when I realized I had drank tomato juice earlier. (Hey, give me a break, I was up for 24 hours, and it hadn’t been an easy journey)

I felt a lot better after that, and started to gain my sense of humor back. Unfortunately airport security people are especially selected for their uptight attitudes and total lack of any humor, so I struggled to make them laugh.

The inefficiency was astounding. There were no less than 12 people running around organizing the lines… but there were only about 4 people to begin with, to actually handle the passports, etc. And only two of them were on our side. It was INSANE. There were more than 340 people from our flight alone, and we weren’t the only flight, so there were hundreds of people.

One particularly surly gentleman was barking orders at everyone. I told Daan that I would try to mellow him out a bit, so I made jokes. He didn’t smile at my jokes, but he was definitely a lot less uptight after that, and a lot friendlier. Yay me! Kindness and being silly go a long way.

Though no one was impressed when one guard told me to stop, and I sang: Hammer Time. My dance was a bit clumsy, but they looked at me like I was a dancing bear about to devour the other passengers, or something. Not the reaction I was expecting. Daan thought it was funny. *sticks out her tongue*

After a ridiculously long wait, it was finally our turn. The humorless man behind the desk suddenly wanted to know all sorts of things… including the address to our hotel. I had to freaking find it on my phone, while struggling with the stupid wifi. I wasn’t amused by this, and I wasn’t entirely sharp at that point either.

We did make it through customs, finally. That’s when we had to pick up the car from Alamo… which was at the other part of the airport… which apparently was in Katman-freaking-du. I swear we drove past our house at one point… that’s how far it was.

We did see a lot of police cars come by when we rode the bus to the car rental place, flashing their lights, in honor of the veterans. That was kind of cool to watch.

We ended up with a Chrystler of some sort. We let Elora think she was picking the car, and she was so proud. Elora was still going, and I was quite impressed.

The car was awesome, though a little filthy inside, but we were too tired to complain. We just wanted to get to the hotel. It was about 4:30 AM Dutch time and we just had enough.

The motel 8 or whatever it was called, was okay. It wasn’t luxurious, but not as shabby as I thought it would be. Getting there was a little tricky, as the sat nav had no idea what road we were on. It made me go a bit bug eyed, and I felt the need to breathe into a bag. But with forced calm, we managed to navigate ourselves out of the strange area, and to the hotel.

There I slept another whopping 4 hours, but when I woke, I was in a much better mood!