[Magdalen] air transport snarl

[Ginga Wilder]

Jim, Have Mercy!!  Sounds as if both you and your wife need a vacation,
perhaps one close enough to drive.

Rest well.
Ginga Wilder

On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 2:19 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> My beloved spouse was on a trip to India and Nepal, and was coming home on
> Saturday. I wasn't sure what time.
> I got a call on my cell. She was stuck in Dubai. The plane out of India was
> a couple hours late, and they missed their Dubai connection. The Emirates
> (NB!) Airlines folks had plenty of warning that this was happening and made
> absolutely no effort to prepare for the glut of passengers lining up to
> re-book.
> It appears that for reasons not clear, Christine's bag never got loaded
> onto the plane in India to begin with, so she arrived home with just her
> back pack. Fortunately, everything essential was on her person. She tries
> to do this all the time, and she had a premonition her bag would get lost.
> At the baggage problems desk, the person there was from another airline and
> said that, yes a person from Emirates Airline ought to be there. He was
> nice enough to take down her information.
> I had to call the limo service's emergency line and explain that my wife
> had missed her plane, so she would not be at the airport at the scheduled
> time. I gave him the new info, and he said he would "figure something out."
> A couple minutes later he called me back to say that the information my
> wife gave me could not possibly be accurate, and could I see what was going
> on?
> I spent a lot of time looking at airplane schedules, and left messages on
> my beloved's cell. She has a hearing deficit, and generally does not hear
> her phone unless she happens to be in just the right situation. Worries!
> After a while she called me, saying she saw I tried to call her, so we
> chatted. It turned out that the slip of paper the airlines gave her for her
> re-booking was a confusing mess, and she had copied some irrelevant number
> instead of her flight number. I got this info to the limo man, and he said,
> "We will be there." What a soldier!
> Her plane landed in Milan to refuel, and they had all passengers deplane
> into the airport's secure area, and then they all had to be vetted again,
> even though they were all in a the security zone of the airport and never
> left it. They take security very seriously. Better some annoyance now than
> a phone call that somewhere over the Atlantic some internal explosion
> turned your sweetie's airplane into a bunch of spare parts.
> She finally got home about midnite easter eve (missed the vigil) and we
> chatted for a bit and retired (we're already retired, but you KWIM).
> After some phone calling some people said they would do what they could to
> locate her bag. Later I got a text saying they had SUCCESS! and her bag
> would shortly be back to her.
> About 9 PM easter, got a phone call that her bag would arrive around 12.30
> to 1.30 -- and should they just leave it somewhere rather than awakening
> us.
> We assured him we would be up.
> By about 3AM I called the number back to ask where the delivery person was.
> The phone got answered, which I thought was a good sign. The person
> answering was on top of the situation and asked me to hold for a moment. He
> then told me the driver was about 45 minutes out. He wanted to know again
> if we wanted them to just leave the bag, and we said no. Call us when he
> gets there.
> In the fullness of time (I just love writing that phrase) the truck
> arrived, and we got my sweetie's bag. Its locks had been cut off, but it
> appeared (the next day) that nothing was missing. Customs probably cut the
> locks.
> I decided to skip Easter morning service too, and just recuperate.
>
> But -- (or "Butt" -- as Deb Bly used to write) all was not lost. We were
> able to stay awake to watch the Jesus Christ Super Star on the telly. I in
> general enjoyed the production, although the subordinate voice parts were
> not as good as they were in other productions I've heard, and there's lots
> of room for some moving special moments, like Pilate's vision, recalled
> with incredible dread, of "Thousands of millions crying for this man, and
> then I heard them mentioning my name -- and leaving me the blame."
>
> It's quite effective how a small number of themes are used in different
> ways throughout the work, giving it a sort of cohesiveness that one does
> not appreciate until it is heard a few times.
>
>
>
>
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>