(about one hour into the flight)
Oh my goodness. Lots to tell you about, but first of all,
our captain is hilarious.
„Laaadies and gentlemen, I have a bit more information for
you about the flight – which I thought might interest you... like, for
instance, where we’re going!“ –insert very long description of every piece of
land we will go across ending with „...then we’ll snag the corner off Nebraska
and have a lovely landing in Denver.“*
He’s just cracking me up.
*okay, okay, a bit loosely translated just to try to explain
all of his jokes!
----------
After nine hours of flying, a bit more of the captain’s
wisdom:
„So, soon we’ll be starting our descent into Denver and
there’s some quick winds around Denver that might blow in some
Thundershowers... let’s hope we’re quicker than them.
In Denver, it is about 34 degrees Celsius.. and that’s
quite something. During our descent
it might get a bit bumpy and that’s just because of the hot temperatures. And
you know.. that’s what happens when you fly.“
„Thank you again for choosing Lufthansa and it was a
pleasure having you on board... for such a long time. Goodbye!“
---------
(Two hours after that)
One of the things I will say about flight delays – nothing
unites a troupe of travelers like adversity. Yes, I volunteered for a different
non-non-stop flight to SFO today in exchange for some hefty compensation from
Lufthansa – this flight was to stop in Denver. As we got closer to Denver,
there started to be thunderstorms over the airport. Aaaand they closed the
airport. Aaand we circled around in the air for a while, the storms didn’t
clear, we didn’t have enough fuel to keep circling until the storms cleared
(seeing as we’d been flying from FRANKFURT FREAKING GERMANY), so we turned around and
have ended up in Oaklahoma City. We are not allowed to get out of the airplane.
We are simply here to refuel, and then we have to get back up in the air and
fly back to Denver, and the ideal plan would be that I still get into San
Francisco and eventually Santa Cruz sometime today! I’m not sure if that will
happen.
Right now, we’re in negotiations with the Oaklahoma City
folks, trying to first get a parking spot big enough for our giant plane and
now trying to get the amount of fuel that this beast needs. It’s like asking a
family of mice to provide a meal for a grizzly bear. Still, we have the
ever-amusing commentary of the pilot and I have reached a point where this is
not sad anymore, just funny. I know I need some sleep and will try to do that
because without it, everything seems incredibly dire.
After a certain number of hours, though, you just want to
breathe real air again. I just looked at the clock on my computer, which is
still on Germany time. In an hour and ten minutes, I will have gotten up to go
to the airport 24 hours ago. Good effing grief!
--------
Also, quick note: should I be a journalist? As soon as the
announcement happened and I got over my initial
stupid-tears-caused-from-tiredness-that-I-couldn’t-stop reaction, the other
reaction was „well, at least I’ll be able to write an interesting blog entry
about this!“
-----
Eventually, I sprinted through the Denver airport with another person who so optimistically volunteered for this other flight, and by the time our plane landed in Denver the last flight to San Francisco for the night was already boarding. We dashed through customs, picked up our bags, checked them back in, went back through security and skidded into the gate just quickly enough for me to ask a friendly stranger for his cell phone to tell my father when I was going to arrive and two hours later, we got there. My lovely family, C included, had waited around in San Francisco for me to arrive and we got home to Santa Cruz at 1:30 in the morning. I calculated that all in all, I was paid about 50 Euros an hour to do that crazy traveling. I'm still deciding whether or not it was worth it.
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