Trip Home: Part Un

*These next blogs are going to be out of order because I don't have my pictures of my vacation in Madagascar ready and don't want to throw up the blogs without the pics. Sorry. I do however have a quite lengthy rant about my trip home as well as a fun tornado story thrown in at the end. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I did living through it! :D


The ageless question…why must there ALWAYS be some catastrophe when I travel internationally??? I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I wasn’t boarding a plane in Africa when 9/11 occurred…or overseas when my country decides to go to war…or truly thinking I’m going to die in a ferry in the middle of a storm in Asia…or getting totally screwed trying to get home from Europe and it taking me 3 days instead of 15 hours. You know, typical crappola like that.

The latest crisis, getting my butt home from Madagascar. Hey, I’ve travelled quite a bit. I know airport procedures from America to Asia. In addition, I’m one of the lucky ones who actually had my return flight home scheduled through South Africa instead of back via my entry flight which was through Europe. Furthermore, I checked in on Orbitz the night before. Flight. Seats. Baggage policy. All confirmed. So, what can possibly go wrong? Right? WRONG!!

First, I had a few issues getting to the airport in Madagascar. Not going to go into detail. But let’s just say I was not pleased. Fortunately, Sarah and Nono were able to come to the rescue and get me to the airport. Anywho, get to the airport, come to find out:
1) they have no clue what a confirmation number is, they need a ticket number, which I did not have as it had not been issued to me through my complicated e-ticket
2) Orbitz? What the hell is that? I needed to call my travel agent! Book-it-yourself internet agencies do NOT EXIST according to Madagascar airport officials.
3) And what type of funny business was I trying to pull!?!? Flying into Madagascar on Air France and leaving via a different airline!?! UNFATHOMABLE!

All of these minor details end up being a big deal. If I wouldn’t have had French-speaking Sarah there arguing for me and locating the exact right employee at the exact right time (apparently this employee is the only one in the entire Tana airport who could get done what needed to be done to locate my elusive ticket number) I wouldn’t have gotten on my flight and would have been stuck in Madagascar for at least a day or 2.

Anyway, we end up working things out about 45 min. before departure.
Now onto bags. Because I’m such a wonderful aunt, I bought some cool things for my nephew and nieces. Oh yeah, and a bunch of stuff for myself. Because of that, I needed a 3rd bag. Fine. Baggage policy says it costs $100, no problem. Cheaper than mailing that stuff home with the hopes that it actually makes it in less than 3 months, if at all. Anyway, once again my bubble is burst when they inform me they don’t do that policy there. And Delta doesn’t have a contract with that particular Madagascar carrier, so of course, I have to go by Madagascar rules which SUCK! They charge $18 per kilo. Hahaha! AND, they can’t check my bags through to my final destination if I choose to bring this 3rd bag. I have to recheck everything in South Africa. Not wanting to deal with that headache, particularly with a fairly short layover, I choose to leave the bag for Sarah and her mom to bring with them to the United States when they move this summer. Once again, saved by Sarah. Okay, so I’m not pissed off. Sure, I’m disappointed I can’t bring the goodies back for my family and friends, especially the little kiddies, but hey, I made my flight out of Madagascar, so things are still good.

Onto South Africa. Getting into South Africa was fine. I even got extra time at the JBurg airport to load up of some cheesy, expensive souvenirs so I wouldn’t come home empty-handed with my head hung low with nothing for the kiddies. Anywho, the 17 hour flight from South Africa to Atlanta wasn’t too bad, save for the profuse vomiting every few hours. That was lovely. Still haven’t figured out what it was that I ate that was so bad, but I’ve been advised that I need to “deworm” myself this week. Yes, like a puppy. Other than that, the seats on this Delta flight were superb. They were leather and almost business class size, and there were more movies available than I could shake a stick at. My final selection ended up being The Blind Side (AWESOME, watched it twice, cried both times), TWILIGHT: NEW MOON (AWESOME, watched it twice, remembered why I’m the captain of TEAM JACOB!!!), “Paranormal” (entertaining, the Micah guy cracked me up, although they went about addressing that demon situation like complete amateurs: if it were me and I actually believed in that crap, I first would have gone to the pastor of my church, if he couldn’t de-demonize me, I definitely would have called a demonologist, oh, say, BEFORE MY SECOND NIGHT OF HAUNTINGS IN THE HOUSE!), I also watched several episodes of CSI and Sex and the City. I was surprised at how fast the flight went by, actually, even with the sickness.

Getting through Atlanta was a pain in the butt. Of course we were late coming in from South Africa so most people missed their connections. I was one of the lucky few who got to frantically grab my bags, recheck them in to security guards who threw them on the belt with a “don’t worry ma’am, your flight’s in 20 min., we got this no problem!” wink, wink, field cheesy “do ya have any lemurs in them there bags, hardy, har, har!!” questions from border protection agents, and sprint to my gate on the opposite side of the terminal.

This leads me to my meeting with THE WITCHIEST FLIGHT STEWARDESS ever. As I run, panting and sweating like a pig down the boarding plank I get to the door of the plane and I hear “excuse me ma’am, are you travelling with someone else because I see you have 3 bags there?” (one of them being a stupid, little bag of FREAKING SOUVENIERS I picked up in JBurg for the kids). Having flown for over 21 hours up to this point, thrown up who knows how many times in those AWFUL airplane bathrooms, no food in my stomach, no sleep, and no mental rope left, I just looked at her, exasperated, and hoped she would throw me a bone beings I was the next to last one on the flight and the flight was LESS than half full and said “ma’am, I’ve been flying 20+ hours from Africa and sprinted to this plane, do you mind if I put the gift shop bag under my seat?” Her response: “I’m sorry, is that a name of someone?”

Unfortunately, I had no synaptic activity left in my brain to come out with some type of smart ass response like: “hey, were you one of those popular girls in high school who has about 4 brain cells and has to rely solely on your looks and chemically-brightened white teeth to maintain your job and think that somehow gives you a free pass to be a complete witch and wield your pissant authority over others in the most idiotic and illogical way? Just curious” or “hey, you might want to tell the big guy upstairs to make it DELTA policy to tell the passengers of this carryon issue regarding gift shop bags on one of the MULTIPLE previous flights where they’ve taken the EXACT SAME CARRYONS! or when the passenger goes to get tags from the desk people for their THREE CARRYONS, or maybe when we go through security, or maybe even when they take our ticket before we walk down the plank!!!” Can you tell this incident really bothers me? Unabashed stupidity and complete lack of common sense wielded in a malevolent manner really gets to me. Especially when it’s over the issue of a stupid gift shop bag carryon. I mean crap, it’s not like I was asking to bring on 3 rolling suitcases like some business class turds.

So no. Instead of thinking of something scathing, mean, and terribly un-Christian to say, I just broke down sobbing. Haha! I was such a pitiful sight. I had no fight left in me and even though I knew they were going to put my bag under the plane in front of me, I already had to leave one bag in Madagascar, I knew my other 2 bags weren’t going to make the flight, and I just wanted to physically hold my suitcase with my contact lenses and makeup (which I specifically put in my carry on because they always break it in my checked luggage!) No, no. I lost the fight, so now I was going to cry. Funny enough, the man behind me (that would be the LAST person to board the less than half-full plane) felt so badly for me he offered to check his bag so that I could bring on my 3rd one instead. She considered the security ramifications of this breach in procedure and said she was bound by law not to knowingly allow someone to bring on someone else’s luggage. Oh for FRICK’s SAKE! We both just looked at her like “you’re kidding me woman. You seriously can’t be that dumb to realize that isn’t the point of that law.” Alas, a rare moment of mental lucidity must’ve won the heavily fought battle for “movie extra-like” appearance time in her brain as she agreed to this “crazy” request under the condition that he carry the bag to my seat, not me, because it’s technically his bag and not mine now. Seriously dude, where do they get these people?!? How are so many people unemployed in this country yet dipcraps like this loser remain gainfully employed?

Okay, my mean-spirited rant is over. I now feel much better and can go on about my day. I will continue the final, climactic part of my journey (which includes an emergency evacuation and a tornado!!) in my next blog because yes, I know you’re just dying to hear another long-winded Katie story…

P.S. Sorry for the offensive tone I took toward flight attendents in this blog. I in no way intend to offend flight attendants in general, just the one above. I have a couple friends who are wonderful flight attendants on Southwest (Go Southwest!) who never have been this mean or "uncommonsensible" toward their passengers.