12-24-08

We didn't have internet for a while, so these posts are a bit old. sorry!
Our trip, which Mom has now dubbed “the Comedy of Errors”, has begun with quite a bang. I hope that our scramble to get on the flight from Indianapolis to Chicago is not foreshadowing for the rest of our travels. The flight was scheduled for 1:00 p.m., leaving time for a fairly leisurely morning, a tasty breakfast, and time to open Christmas presents. At around 4 in the morning, we received a phone call from American Airlines telling us that our flight and the one after had been cancelled. Our only option, if we wanted to make the connecting flight, was to fly at 8:00 a.m. There was chaos in our house. My parents called my brother, Patrick, who had not yet finished packing, and my grandfather, who was driving us to the airport. Fortunately, both picked up. We were driving toward the airport by around 5:30 on roads that were relatively empty and free of ice. The hour-long drive was, for me, a strange combination of adrenaline and sleepiness. We arrived at the airport at 6:30 where we printed out boarding passes and checked in luggage as fast as we could. When we went through security, Dad could not find his boarding pass. “Well, it looks like Matthew Hitchings isn’t flying today,” said the security officer. After digging around in his carry-on for a bit, however, Dad found the offending pass.
We got to our gate with time to spare only to discover that the flight before ours, scheduled to leave for St. Louis at 7:00, had boarded and then been asked to unboard again. All the people from that flight and more and more people from ours congregated around gate B9. We milled about in confusion for a while, asking passengers who were just as confused as we were if they knew what was happening. After checking the departures board three times, it was announced that our gate had been changed.
You would think that, after boarding the plane, our adventures would end, that we would be safe in the competent hands of trained experts. No such luck. Halfway through the flight, Mom spilled scalding Green Tea on my left and her right leg, causing shrieks, first degree burns, and wet clothing. We cleaned up the mess with napkins (fortunately none of our bags got wet), but I am now walking with a slight limp because of my shoes rubbing against my tender left foot.
Our final adventure so far was when we discovered that not all the boarding passes printed. As of now, Patrick and I have no way of leaving Brussels for Chennai. This is a problem we have yet to deal with but we have time as our flight does not leave for Brussels until 4:45 and it is only 10:00. We have eaten a breakfast that tasted suspiciously like lunch, but we have been awake for seven hours. (If you are wondering how I calculated that 10-4=7, you are forgetting the time change.) Rather than be put out by these setbacks, I am quite happy. Maybe the trip would still seem unreal if everything had gone smoothly. Things do not generally go smoothly when my family flies, so I suppose that is what I am used to. We will soon see what the next leg of the journey turns up.