Finally Home!

WE'RE HOME! And let me tell you,getting here was no small undertaking. It's taken a few days of recovery here, so I'm just now finally updating. I have never in my life experienced such a frustrating two days of travel. I can tell you this for sure too--good rates or not, we will NEVER fly American Airlines again. Now, in retrospect, I should have known things were going to get hairy when we had trouble at the Mexican border on Saturday. We laughed it off and jokingly said we hoped our whole trip home wasn't that difficult. Ha! It turned out not to be a joke!

We left Tijuana on Saturday evening after shopping at Rosarita Beach, the open-air market I told you about last time we went. I thought that Kristi and my mom needed to experience it, so we built our entire day around it. They loved it, and blew a bunch of money (apparently all women respond well to retail therapy!) in the booths. It took us forever to get a van from the hospital to San Diego. They overbooked the 5 p.m. departure that I had reserved, so we had to wait for another diver, which took until about 6:15. Then, when we arrived at the border station, we waited another hour for our turn to be inspected. Last time we left Tijuana they opened the van door, looked around, asked us a few questions, and sent us on our way. This time, no such luck. Apparently the border patrol officer at our station was in a bad mood, because he informed us that we, and all of our belongings, needed to go inside and cross the border on foot. So we lugged all of our carefully packed and very heavy suitcases through the turnstyle and up to the counter where they looked at us, asked a few questions, and let us pass. Next we had to put all our suitcases throught the x-ray machine. It was loud, and chaotic, and people were pushing and trying to hurry through the machines ahead of us. Then, as suddenly as the whole thing began, we were back outside and it was all over. It really went pretty fast, until we tried finding our driver. We expected him at the circle drive right in fron of us, but he was no where to be seen. Finally, he walked up behind us, took some of the luggage, and led us across two train tracks then down a long sidewalk to a distant parking lot where he re-loaded the van. Talk about inconvenient! We couldn't believe he had to park and come get us on foot. Then he had to pay his way out of the lot. No wonder our wait was so long. I guess they walked everyone across the border that night. We were extremely relieved that night to arrive at our clean, modern, quiet, hotel for the evening. It took three hours to go 30 miles.

San Diego was beautiful. We have found that airline tickets are more expensive if you return within a week of your departure, so on both trips we have had a day in the city to enjoy. This time we took a trolley tour and saw a great deal of what San Diego has to offer. We want to spend more time there when I'm well, and now we know more about what we want to see. The real adventure of our homecoming, however, began Monday when we tried to fly home.

We made it to the airport in plenty of time with all of our things. We were scheduled to fly close to the same time; Mom and Kristi at 12:15 or so to KC, and we planned to depart just before them to Dallas at 11:50. It's a small airport, and there is nothing (NOTHING!) to do there, but we took the advice of the hotel clerk and arrived with two hours to spare for security and anything else that might come up. So we arrived at the airport about 9:45, got through security in record time, and then found out that our flight had been delayed until 12:45 due to bad weather in Dallas. We were fed already, but found a Starbucks booth (one of only 2 food vendors there!) and had a coffee, and then sat and waitied. And waited. It was really crowded. People were just everywhere, and most of them were complaining about the delay. Kristi and Mike had had just about enough of each other , and no one had much left to say to each other. I felt pretty good, I guess that's a plus. But the wait seemed really long. Finally Kristi and Mom left to go catch their plane, which later went off without a hitch. We were not so lucky.

You don't want a minute by minute explanation of this I know, so I will shorten it some. Our plane never came. As our departure time neared and we had no plane at our gate we were informed that our plane was close and circling, waiting for a turn to land. Then they told us that our plane was nearly out of fuel so it was flying to Palm Springs to refuel. Then they said it was going to stay in Palm Springs to allow some people to deplane (why?). It would be here soon. Then they told us it wasn't coming at all. They were instead going to send us another plane, but it wouldn't be here until 7 p.m. That was when we got fed up. We had been patient all day. But now 200 people were trying to reschedule flights and get hotel rooms. I got smart and called the 800 number on my ticket instead of standing in line at the ticket desk, and that was a good thing. Then we went to the front ticket desk to see about getting them to pay for a room for the night. They's be happy to--only the computer to make the reservations was down at the moment. We would need to wait and see if it came back up. We found our own hotel. Before leaving the airport, we needed to go retrieve our checked baggage. Here's where the real clincher came. When they found our luggage, Mike's bag had been severely damaged--the whole end where the extendable handle is was badly bent as though something had run over it. This was a huge, costly Samsonite bag we just bought, and the supports were metal. There was nothing we could do to reshape it. And best of all, it never even left the airport! We couldn't believe it. It was a real slap in the face at the end of a grueling day.

We went back to our now very-familiar Hampton Inn in downtown San Diego (after another hour's wait, due to miscommunication regarding the van they were driving. We hadn't been looking for a Residence Inn van.). We went out for a very nice Italian dinner, then we went to bed. We were ready to go at it tomorrow and finally just get home. There was one more surprise in store for us in the morning.

Tuesday when we got up we were focused on getting home. We were ready in a hurry and the shuttle got us to the airport. It was when we tried to check our bags at the curb that we first discovered a problem. Though we had our boarding passes already, our airline had somehow flagged us for an additional security check. So we had to lug all our things up a level to the ticket desk, wait in line again, then go to security where they did the preliminary check like everyone else, but then we had to identify everything that was ours (we had mixed it up on the way in the bins) without touching our things, then we were taken to a separate area where all of our items were hand searched, followed by a physical search of our bodies. All this time I wanted to scream at someone. WHAT IS GOING ON!?! No one in security had any information for us. All they said was that sometimes when you have a change in your ticket date they do this. But it wasn't even our fault! I was on the verge of breakdown. I was exhausted and teary and couldn't speak. I've never been so angry and humiliated in my life. Obviously, they found nothing of concern and sent us on our way.

We made it to our gate in time to board. Our flight went quickly as did our connection in Dallas. We were overjoyed when we pulled into the airport nearly 24 hours later than expected. By this time I was completely worn out. Given my condition and the reasons for our travel in the first place, I never should had been subjected to this sort of treatment. Not one person, anywhere along the line, made any kind of offer for people who might need assistance or who might have some other special need. We were deeply disappointed in our airline. They will hear about it from me and I plan to get some kind of satisfaction in all this!

So you can see why updating my blog has taken a few days. I have spent a lot of time on the couch the last two days resting. Overall, I feel good. I think I feel stronger than I did a few weeks ago. Let's hope and pray that continues. It's Friday now, and there's not going to be much to write about coming up. I do have my third trip to Mexico scheduled for March 20, and Mike will stay home this time. I think that will be easier on the kids. After that I shouldn't need to go for three months. Now I just have to keep on keeping on! Hope everyone feels free to call, visit, or email over the coming weeks! I'm pretty sure I don't have a lot planned! Lots of love to you all! Sandi