Getting home

Here is the story of our trip home.

 

Thursday, June 27th - flight scheduled to depart TLV at midnight: Mid-morning, Kent checks online to make sure our flight is still leaving on time. Hah - not only is it not leaving on time - it has been rescheduled for the following day at 3:00 pm! That means at the best someone will have to pick us up in Salt Lake in the middle of the night. Not acceptable.

Kent calls the travel agent that the Center uses and she suggests calling the local Delta office directly. She even gave him a number. He actually got to talk to a human!! By that time, Delta had opened another flight leaving at midnight on Friday night. We got the first 2 seats on that flight :)

 

Friday, June 28: Our good friend, Frank Judd, drove us to the airport. He got us there 3 hours ahead of time - which turned out to be a VERY good thing. In the Tel Aviv airport you stand in one line where security people check your passport and ask you where you are going, etc. etc. Then you put your luggage to check, through an xray machine. If you are lucky - the security person puts a tag on the bag and you go directly to the check-in desk.

We were partly lucky - 2 of our 5 bags received a tag. Kent took those 2 and went to wait in the check-in line. I took the other 3 bags and went to the "wait here until someone can search your bags personally" line. [Kent's shoulder won't allow him to lift bags onto anything]. Unfortunately, I was in line behind a group of 6, who all had each piece of their luggage THOUROUGHLY searched.

 

This is what waiting there felt like!

When it was finally my turn security checked all 3 of my bags in about 1 minute, tagged them, and I got to Kent just as he was ready to check in.

So THIS is how we felt waiting in this line. :)

Friday at midnight: We arrived at the gate as they were announcing the boarding. Like I said 3 hours ahead was a very good thing! The flight was fine - unremarkable - which is what you want.

We arrived in New York. We walked, walked, walked . . . . . until we got to customs, where we waited in line, showed our passports, and then picked up our luggage. Now, the plan is - you pick up your luggage, go through security, and then simply go to the recheck desk and drop your luggage back off to continue on to your final destination. Remember that our flight was not a regularly scheduled one and apparently Delta didn't inform their people in New York that we were coming.

This is what we found when we went to recheck our luggage:

 

After about an hour of hoping that someone would come to help us. Most of us went upstairs to the regular check-in desk.

 

This is what we found there. :( 

 

 

 This is me:

Kent finally convinced one of the workers that we didn't need to check-in, we just needed to give our luggage back. He opened up one counter for us! Yay!!! Now, we just needed to go to our gate and wait for our flight.

This is what we did for the next 30+ minutes:

 

 

 This is me:

We did eventually reach our gate and made our flight. And we did make it home - with all 5 pieces of luggage. So, all's well that ends well. But don't expect me to be flying ANYWHERE for quite some time!!!!! :)