Please bare with me for my first world rant, but what modern major airport still makes you pay for wifi?! The answer: London-Hethrow. The first time I wrote this post I used the free 45 minuet wifi, and after calling the bank, talking to my mother about my newly re-booked flight, emailing the people who would be picking me up in Entebbe, and attempting to write this post the wifi ended and forgot to tell me. As soon as I clicked enter the post disappeared. So here is take two.
Some journeys have smooth beginnings; other people’s journeys are more turbulent. Mine happened to be the latter. My flight to Dallas, with an original take of time of 11:55, continued to be delayed due to a server thunderstorm going over Dallas. For the first hour or so we sat on the plane waiting on the tar mac. When they decided to take us back to the gate, it was broken. Around 2:30 (we had been on the plane since 12:15) they fixed the gate, and we could disembark. Another hour and 15 minuets later the pilot gained clearance to let us back on the plane. We did not leave until after 4:00 PM.
By some stroke of mixed luck landing in Dallas at 7:30 still gave me a three-hour layover for the flight to London I thought I had missed. That was the good luck. The bad luck was that the (five-hour) delay in Dallas caused me to miss my connecting flight to Entebbe. When I talked to customer service in Dallas they gave me two options. One would be to fly Kenya air (an airline with a sketchy flight record) from London, to Nairobi, to Entebbe. Choice two: Spend two days in London and fly out on the 15th. I would be 6 hours late for orientation this way, but my mother and I agreed this would be the best decision.
At 10:15 Dallas time my flight finally took of. I had the bulk head so I spend the night with The Shining, a Brookstone n.a.p. case, head phone case, and granola bars in my seat with me. Food (which I had barely eaten that day) arrived some point after my reading and my first nap. The cooked rice and vegetables could not have tasted better if they had come from a five star restaurant with $100 plates. Even the fruit plate tasted fresh. Only the salad had a less than exquisite taste, but it was still great for airplane food.
After sleeping and reading for the rest of the flight we landed in London to rain (which luckily has subsided by now). With all my gear I followed the purple signs down to transphering flights, in hopes of finding a desk at which I could claim the hotel vouchers promised to me in Dallas. Instead of taking the tram I opted to take the long 15 minuet walk to the gates. I came across two workers in my walk. After sitting on the plane if felt good to stretch my legs, and the solitude calmed my nerves, and allowed me to re-group.
When I joined the rest of the people who had taken the train instead of walking I worried there would be a long line for customer service. I should have known better. Instead of the typical two people you see in the states this desk had 10 or so people working, and a two-person line. I didn’t get my hotel vouchers though. I instead got a surprise trip down to the Dubai airport, which would then put me in Entebbe on the 14th around 2 in the afternoon, and a meal voucher for ten GBP. I managed to spend 9.55 of it at Giraffe's (good name hu?) on a shake and potato toppers, which I ate while watching the Italian National men’s beach volleyball team gather their stuff and leave the same restaurant. They had a saying on the wall which I liked: Love, Eat, Live. Pretty cool. Fingers crossed this next leg of the flight goes better!
