End of the Road

Day 50 - Wednesday July 14th, Atlantic, Atlanta, DC

We survived our 16.5 hour flight, direct from Joburg to Atlanta, and landed back in the land of humidity and Southern accents around 8am. Both felt like the nectar of the gods. We hurried through immigration and customs just as fast as we could and rushed across the 63528 terminals at ATL in an attempt to make our 9:35 connection to Dulles. We arrived at the gate around 9:27 to find the door closed and no Delta attendant at the gate. There was a rebooking area nearby where we were informed to rebook our flight. Having expected them to hold the plane for us and the several other passengers on our flight trying to make the same connection, and exhausted by having traveled for about 24 hours at this point, I got on the rebooking phone very prepared to give some poor hourly employee a piece of my mind.

I was informed, as if I should be really excited by Delta efficiency, that we'd already been rebooked to the 1:33pm flight to Dulles. That's all well and good, but I was curious as to why I paid a ridiculous amount of money for two tickets (we'll decline saying just how much out of modesty and the fact that the memory might just cause me to regurgitate my lunch all over the keyboard. But let's just say we were certainly victims of extreme price increases for the World Cup) and they were incapable of holding the plane for 5 minutes. The kind lady informed me that ATC will cancel the flight if the gate door isn't closed 15 minutes before departure time. Now I'm no expert on the matter, and perhaps ATL, as busy as it is, has different policies, but I've certainly been on other flights where the connection comes in late and they hold the plane for 10 minutes or so...or longer. Not to mention the random other delays we've all experienced that have resulted in temporary delaying of the closing of the gate door....none of which has ever resulted in flight cancellation. I informed not-so-kind lady of these previous experiences and politely inquired as to why Delta's policies were so much more idiotic. She simply repeated her pack of lies as I became increasingly agitated. Luckily I at least got the satisfaction of ending the conversation with "well thank you for you help; this will most certainly be my last flight on Delta. Goodbye."

With a ton of time to kill, we eased ourselves back into America by promptly hitting Ben & Jerry's, Starbucks, and the Sports Scene where we had chili nachos and chili burgers. I think we both lost some weight in the past two months and it's important that we don't return home looking thin. That's just un-American. Everyone knows this.

The final flight back was uneventful, although we were entertained by a guy who'd just spent a few months in Ghana and told us all about West Africa. And oil spills.

Brian's mom and brother met us at the airport and even brought America-themed leis for us, which did a lot to ameliorate my distress at missing the Fourth of July. 

It's great to be back -- we're glad to get to catch the second half of summer, and shower with hot water and use a towel afterwards, and use our smartphones when we get lost (I know, so spoiled), and have conversations in English that are not hindered by very heavy accents or limited vocabulary. In short, it's good to be home.

We also loaded all the pictures we took (754 of them) onto my computer and hopefully I'll get organized soon to edit and post the interesting ones either here or somewhere else. (I'll post a link here if I decide on elsewhere).

Thanks for following along! (if there's anyone actually out there...my mother says there is, but I'm pretty sure she has to say that because she's my mother -- hi Ma!)