Fort Mill – Saturday, June 8th
Jun 12th, 2019 by rallyadmin
It’s departure day. Barbara, Talyn, Mika and I are leaving for a couple of weeks in the UK. Ayron is staying home with the pets and watching the house.
Everything is done and we’ve got about 2 hours until the ride to the airport arrives at 3:30. It seems odd to be sitting without a last minute household catastrophe to be dealt with at the last minute. Oddly quiet for the last couple of hours. I’ll take it.
The weather is threatening and there are supposed to be thunderstorms arriving for about the same time as our 6PM departure. We have a short, 45 minute connection in JFK and that beginning to look a bit sketchy.
The driver arrives early, we load up and say goodbye to Ayron. The driver remembers us from last year’s trip to Rhode Island for Michael’s wedding. He even remembers that we were leaving right after for Croatia and Bosnia. Off we go.
The flight leaves the gate on time but as soon as we get to the runway and get into the takeoff queue things start looking doubtful for the connection at JFK. We wait about 20 minutes to get to the head of the queue and takeoff. I wonder where we’ll spend the night when we almost certainly miss the flight to Heathrow. Just another adventure.
The weather in New York is actually good – much better than in Charlotte. It looks like the one airport where planes never leave on time is running on schedule. To make matters worse, we’re flying to JFK on Delta but flying to Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic and though the flights are a codeshare, I suspect that VA is more likely to wait for their own passengers but not so much for Delta codeshare passengers. Oh well.
We land in JFK and disembark with about 20 minutes to make the flight. And the gates almost can’t be farther apart and still be in the same terminal. We start walking briskly toward the VA gate and find a courtesy cart that agrees to take us to the VA gate. We make it though we’re one of the last passengers to board.
Surprisingly, we make the flight but there’s no chance that the bags will make the flight with us. In order to not wait for hours at Heathrow for our bags to not actually arrive with the flight, before we leave I ask one of the flight attendants to ask ground if our bags made the flight.
As I suspected, the bags didn’t make this flight but the should on a second VA flight that leaves @ 10PM, an hour after we leave. We’re told that the bags will be on that flight but that’s hard to believe. Maybe but…
The close up the plane and taxi for takeoff. We settle in for the seven hour flight. Hopefully, the seats will be comfortable. And maybe our bags will be following along behind us. Hope springs eternal.
Obi-wan
