To Boldly Go Where I Have Not Gone Before- Haiti blog, #1
Sat, March 20-
I woke up not feeling so well- my own fault for “staying out too late”. I managed to drag my sorry self out of bed by about 10 am,, and thrikreed drove me around to take care of some pre-departure errands, dropping me off with my purchases while Mark minded the home front. At about 2 p.m. Mark came into the room and interrupted the nap that I was taking to tell me that while he’d been injecting Mom’s insulin the needle had broken off in her abdomen. So added to our events of the afternoon was a stop at the ER. We drove up, I escorted Mom in while Mark circled the parking lot and I signed the paperwork needed for Mom to be seen, and let the ER staff know that Mark would return for her after he had dropped me off at the airport. Despite the delay, I met the doc I was going with at the gate and we boarded on time. We landed at DFW with enough time to get a light dinner at TGIFriday’s before we had to board at 8:30 for our 9 p.m. flight. Well, thanks to Mother Nature, that didn’t exactly go as planned. It was actually _colder_ in DFW (36 F) than it was in Des Moines (38 F) and snowing to boot, so our plane needed de-icing. That wouldn’t have been such a problem, but of course it wasn’t just _our_ plane that needed de-icing but every other plane in the entire airport. This being Dallas, not exactly in the snow belt, I think they only had one of the needed machines. Our 8:30 p.m. flight actually managed to leave at about 12:30 a.m.
Once again, that wouldn’t have been so bad, but when we arrived at Fort Lauderdale, we were kicked out of the secure area because they wanted to close it for cleaning, and of course this meant that we and our luggage had to go through security yet again. Yay. We ended up sleeping in the ticketing area with our various electrical appliances plugged in to charge.
"Naptime in Fort Lauderdale Airport", photo courtesy of Kyle ver Steeg.
I woke up not feeling so well- my own fault for “staying out too late”. I managed to drag my sorry self out of bed by about 10 am,, and thrikreed drove me around to take care of some pre-departure errands, dropping me off with my purchases while Mark minded the home front. At about 2 p.m. Mark came into the room and interrupted the nap that I was taking to tell me that while he’d been injecting Mom’s insulin the needle had broken off in her abdomen. So added to our events of the afternoon was a stop at the ER. We drove up, I escorted Mom in while Mark circled the parking lot and I signed the paperwork needed for Mom to be seen, and let the ER staff know that Mark would return for her after he had dropped me off at the airport. Despite the delay, I met the doc I was going with at the gate and we boarded on time. We landed at DFW with enough time to get a light dinner at TGIFriday’s before we had to board at 8:30 for our 9 p.m. flight. Well, thanks to Mother Nature, that didn’t exactly go as planned. It was actually _colder_ in DFW (36 F) than it was in Des Moines (38 F) and snowing to boot, so our plane needed de-icing. That wouldn’t have been such a problem, but of course it wasn’t just _our_ plane that needed de-icing but every other plane in the entire airport. This being Dallas, not exactly in the snow belt, I think they only had one of the needed machines. Our 8:30 p.m. flight actually managed to leave at about 12:30 a.m.
Once again, that wouldn’t have been so bad, but when we arrived at Fort Lauderdale, we were kicked out of the secure area because they wanted to close it for cleaning, and of course this meant that we and our luggage had to go through security yet again. Yay. We ended up sleeping in the ticketing area with our various electrical appliances plugged in to charge.
"Naptime in Fort Lauderdale Airport", photo courtesy of Kyle ver Steeg.