We haven’t even left the San Francisco airport yet on our trip to Wales in 2003. But then, again, even though I have walked 52 days, I still have not made it to Lovelock.
So more of the Wales Trip:
That Thursday morning, the airport was as unpopulated as I have ever seen it. We stood in line for a few minutes before being ushered to a very pleasant and efficient woman at the American Airlines counter. When she saw that we had to travel through O’Hare, she immediately checked the with the counter supervisor about weather conditions in Chicago. Possibility of a snow shower, she was informed. She put us on an earlier flight so that we could catch our connection without a concern for the delay. We walked down to our new gate and discovered that our plane, scheduled to depart in 15 minutes, was not at the terminal gate. Dorey walked around the airport to find food to eat for breakfast while I pulled out the Merl Reagle crossword puzzle book. As I state there being defeated yet again by Mr. Reagle, I listened to the flight attendants who would accompany us to Chicago.
I have noticed that whenever you have two or more flight attendants in the same small space, you will be privy to a first class whine session. These guys whine more about their jobs than any group of lawyers I know. They whine more about their jobs than any group of municipal employees I know. Andy they even whine more that any group of Mormon missionaries that I know. Okay, maybe not as much as the Mormon missionaries, but they are pretty dang close. And our group of four gals and one guy that morning were certainly doing their share of whining that morning. “The airline is cutting too far back on the number of us,” one said. A few minutes later, without noting the seeming contradiction, this same attendant said, “I can’t get enough hours.” The rest of them sort of agreed, or brought up their other complaints. I sort of went into the “moan, complain, moan, complain,” mantra that I have adopted to stop listening to others moan and complain.
Our trip to O’Hare was uneventful. A heavy cloud cover blanketed the earth, and it was not a day to view the country. So on the trip, we ate a very dry sandwich, a few carrots, and a brownie out of something known as a Bistro bag and watched Spy Kids in lovely 2-D. Spy Kids 3-D was not much of a movie, but I could see how the visuals would be spectacular in the 3-D format.
I immediately checked the weather on landing at O’Hare. I have had one of the worst experiences in my life there. It happened over 15 years ago, but it still haunts me. I was to travel to Indiana to attend the deposition of a doctor in an asbestos related cancer case. The person having the cancer was to die at any moment. In any event, I left the West Coast on Monday morning, planning on flying to O’Hare and then onto Indiana. We had an unexpected landing in Iowa, where we sat for two hours waiting for the runway in Chicago to be cleared from the snow of an early winter storm. We then landed in Chicago, only to be informed that we could not fly onto Indian because of the storm conditions. I tried to rent a car to drive to Indiana, and then tried to rent a hotel room in Chicago, both without success. I spent the night at the O’Hare Airport. I was able to catch an early flight into Indiana the next day. I must have looked pretty haggard. When I arrived at the deposition, the other guy mistook me for the guy who was to die in a few days.
Happily, it was cold but clear in Chicago, and we could expect that our plane would get out on time. We walked around the O’Hare airport a little bit, and then went to eat in one of the restaurants. I selected a particular restaurant for a particular reason. About a year ago, I was given the assignment of trying to decided if there was coverage for an insurance claim made by this restaurant chain. In brief, the restaurant claimed that following the September 11, attacks, it lost money at its airport restaurants. It further claimed that the airports were ordered closed by civil authorities, a ground for coverage under its business interruption coverage existed. In fact, while the FAA ordered the airspace closed, we could not find any order closing the airports per se. The restaurant simply lost money because no one was going to the restaurant because the airspace was closed. Can you imagine going to an airport restaurant for any reason other than because you are stuck in an airport for a few hours? So we denied the restaurant’s insurance claim. I was right, but felt kind of bad that there was no coverage for this insurance claim. So when I saw this restaurant at O’Hare, I took your mother there to eat, hoping that my $22.00 would somehow make up some of the $22,000 the restaurant lost following the September 11 attacks. After eating (by the way, the food was only fair, and so now I don’t feel half as bad as I did about my coverage opinion), we walked around and then went to sit at our gate to read a newspaper and wait the couple of hours we had to wait.
At some point, I went to the bathroom. In O’Hare, there is a cool toilet seat cover mechanism. There is plastic covering on the seat. You wave your hand in front of the sensor, and the plastic moves so that you have a fresh clean piece of plastic to put your checks on. I was so impressed that I went back to the bathroom a couple of times just to watch this magic seat cover move. I can by such a five year old at times. Anyway, in one of my absences, Dorey, shockingly, struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger waiting to board the plane. I have always been amazed at Dorey’s ability to just talk to complete strangers. I would never speak to anyone, and even if I knew them, would not speak a lot. She will speak to anyone--bank cashiers, people in lines in grocery stores, folks in airports. I don’t know if she has a real talent in this area, or whether I am so socially inept that I don’t recognize this is how the whole world does it. Dorey says the truth is that she is much more comfortable speaking to complete strangers that to people she has known for a long time. There is no pressure to be clever or remember past events. So she just has a good time learning about the particular person or making jokes about current circumstances. Dorey’s new best friend was a woman in her early 60s from Scotland. She had been in Chicago visiting her son and family, including three grandchildren. She had to return to Scotland because the rest of her children still resided there. At that point, Dorey and this lady stood to stretch their legs, and I was not able to catch more of their conversation.
Shortly thereafter, a young man came to sit by us. He was from northern Wales, and had been in the U.S. for a week on a business trip, visiting three states in five days. He tried to explain what he was selling, but I , being a computer dinosaur, could not understand it. He had to get home for a party that his girlfriend was throwing the next night. He had never heard of Laugharne, but said that we would like visiting Swansea. At last, our plane was ready to board. We would our seats--two together sitting by an aisle, and sat down. While it was about 8:45 p.m. in Chicago, it was only 6:45 p.m in our time, and I was not tired. We watched a movie or two, and a BBC television sitcom, “My Family.” The show has an overbearing wife and mother, a father and husband who tries to keep peace at all costs, a daughter who is away at University (but home for the Christmas holidays), a son who is stupid, and a son who is smart. In this episode, the son brings home an old man for Christmas dinner. The family leaves the old man at home after dinner while they go to the pub. The old man, of course, rips them off. It was a pretty standard sitcom, but amused me no end.
At some point in the evening, I fell asleep, and caught at least a couple of hours before the pilot woke us up to tell us that we would be landing in a couple of hours and they wanted to feed us before they landed. I don’t know why they just did not let me sleep. At about 10:45 a.m., we landed, having begun our travels 16 hours the day before. We were smelly, but we were in England.
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There--I at last have us out of the San Francisco Airport, and into England. I am still not in Lovelock. I have walked 630,282 steps in 52 days. I have walked 298 miles since leaving Alameda. I will be in Lovelock in 16 miles.
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