APR-C-3
IF YOU THINK THAT THE SNAFU AT UVA
WAS ENOUGH ADVENTURE
FOR THIS TRIP ALREADY PRE-LAUNCH,
WAIT UNTIL YOU GET A CHANCE TO ENJOY THE PROCESS IN THE
MISADVENTURES OF THE “SUPER SHUTTLE” RIDE TO DULLES,
THE CLOSED L/H FLIGHT FOR WHICH I AM TICKETED AND RESERVED FOR EXTRA
BAGGAGE ALLOTMENT,
AND, NOW, SOMEHOW, AM AIRBORNE, ENROUTE TO FRA,
ON ANOTHER CARRIER, TO RENDEZVOUS (LATE) WITH OTHER
STUDENTS EXPECTING TO MEET ME IN FRA, FOR THE FLIGHT TO DEL
April 18, 2002
Travel, it is said, is broadening, and, of course, could probably considerably shorten the lives of almost anyone with hypertension or any other reason to have a stroke after an unbeatable series of SNAFUS. So, you think that the UVA Bioethics Center expecting me on the wrong day after they had clearly booked me carefully for the time that I showed up was enough adventure for the start of this trip?
Try the Super Shuttle pickup arriving forty-five minutes late on an already late connection, and then going on to try to pickup another passenger, getting lost in Gaithersburg for an hour that was the margin before our flight—having us arrive in Dulles after Lufthansa 419 was already closed? OK, that was the flight for which I was ticketed, conformed and for which I had an extra baggage overload allowance. It was also a “Lufthansa Only” “bulk ticket” which meant that no one else would honor it, including the Star Alliance partners, like United, with a flight leaving at 9:30 PM—a carrier also unlikely to allow the six boxes of medicines. I could even “catch up” with the waiting medical students who are virgin voyagers awaiting my leading them out of Frankfurt and onward to Delhi and beyond to Dharamsala, since there is about a six hour layover in FRA which would get us in there two hours before the L/H Delhi flight we could still take if we went on the later U/A flight.
There ARE seats, but no way will they take the ticket, say all of the agents in both L/H and U/A at the check in gates, so I will have to buy another ticket for both me and the medical student Marita Mike who had met me on arrival of my hurried return from UVA to my driveway where she was parked as I skidded to a stop still wearing a suit and tie on the second hottest day on record for this time of year—same as I had for the useless Super Shuttle ride. How much is a one-way ticket to FRA for each of us? $2850. How about a round trip ticket? $1685—you go figure. Still, that is too much money to risk, for a redundant ticket, and no assurance I would get either refunded or reimbursed, let alone two of them. So, if we are keeping score, the UVA was at fault for my showing up exactly on time and they having erred, and the Super Shuttle had triumphantly said to us that we were “AOR” (“At Own Risk” for getting to the airport on time in a close connection---meaning we were leaving at 3:15 PM for a 5:30 PM flight, not counting on a 45 minute late pickup, and a further one hour of lost time wandering to look for another passenger—but they are completely exonerable, since they cannot be liable, after all, you are AOR!
So, I am left again to the devices of whatever can be worked out by doing end runs on the same people who explain that I cannot get there from here; before I shell out ransom funds, I might simply go back home and re-pack in more than the luxurious four minutes that I did all hot and sweaty as I rushed around in a pre-planned frenzy of last minute packing as I returned late from Charlottesville—as it turned out, I could have showered, eaten lunch, and still had time for the Shuttle to arrive as late as he was anyway. So, I did what I could. I went to the U/A counter and explained to another fellow that I needed to be there, and he asked that we go to a L/H ticket agent –not the gate, and have them issue a NEW Ticket, and NOT to sign over the one that U/A would not accept. It took over an hour, but they did, even accepting all six packages of medicines—each of which needed to be sliced open and tested for explosives before they were sent all the way to Delhi. I am now in my search as a “Juice Junkie” trying to get the electricity in the batteries of this machine in order to have enough power to continue this and the other narratives of this very long trip, but all of the messages you have so far are those of one cliff-hanging disaster after another—which is all true.
So the only lesson of consequence is not so much what nasty things are happening and in what number and sequence they are piling up almost as omens of evil at the outset for this trip, but how I might respond to them. No hypertensive crisis is coming from me on this one, I am ready now for the first dinner to be had since I sat in the unaccustomed leisure of the Omni Hotel last night and had “pheasant dinner” special with a glass of Black and Tan ale—contemplating this unchosen quiet evening at leisure when I would otherwise be in the middle of a “ground rush” of last minute events. This “buttoning up” would take care of the details, for which I carry responsibility, but all other responsibilities are simply deniable, so the weak links will always determine the forward progress that may or may not eventually result. I am about to get off the ground, so whatever evil gremlins have crawled in so far, have not totally derailed a very persistent and determined “adapter” who can, by now, roll with almost any punch in the travel glitch department!
I have tried to make the most of each opportunity, and still get the mission accomplished. As an example, last night I spent several hours typing up a new Apr-C-series in the Omni hotel. Being there without a computer (or toothbrush, for that matter, since I had not anticipated being their overnight), I wandered into an unattended Business Center “ in the Omni Hotel and found a computer turned on and running. I tried to print out the story of the Boston marathon, but it was attached to a printer, that would not print. I then began the story of the unanticipated Charlottesville overnight, and it refused to save the typescript to my disc, alleging the disc was full. So I tried to delete some files from the disc of the Apr-B-series, which I might be able to reconstitute from the hard drive disc of this laptop when I returned to it, and it would not make room. I then remembered I had a spare disc tucked away in the Bronco, and I saved the file on the Business Center computer and ran off to the Bronco to get the disc and save it—at last—so at least the efforts of my evening would not vanish into the vacuum that my last forty eight hours of flailing before takeoff for five weeks has seem to accumulate in a non-comedy of errors. Great! I have a new disc begun; now of a new series for this trip, labeled Apr-C-series---and this laptop cannot open it. Why not? It states that it contains a virus, labeled the WMC/97 virus, and my Sophos anti-viral sweep cannot work on it since it is over three months old and will not be able to get started. Also, there is no way I can get that story on to you until the virus is cleansed and I now have that disc as my spare (back-up) disc in the machine, while I swooped up three discs at Derwood in my four minutes packing up and careful review of the list I had made while driving back home from Charlottesville, knowing I would have little time to make such a careful fast packing without a checklist of my own on such details as carrying backup discs for such eventualities. It turns out that the three discs I had swooped up are the three discfuls of essays I had written during the Year of Fulbrightness and the discs are already full.
So, my first session in any cybercafe which I arrive in McLeod Gunj would have transmitted the Apr-B-series and the Apr-C-series from that emailing home, but for the fact that I cannot access the earlier two chapters of the Apr-C-series until (and maybe not even after) I get some kind of antiviral sweep of the new disc that had not only saved my Omni Hotel efforts, but also picked up an infection of some form of Macro virus from its machine.
After Marita had flirted, cried, looked distraught and done whatever she could at the L/H ticket agent, one of the men there after six people had told her there was nothing that could be done, but to go home and come back to try another day with a new paid ticket, that man carried the bulk tickets to the U/A gate and went behind the counter and got us the two boarding passes for the last row in the back of the 777 leaving at 9:30 PM—which may have us arriving in time to rendezvous with our no doubt very nervous medical student as yet unknown to me who are awaiting our earlier L/H arrival in FRA to carry us all on to DEL. Because we are late ticketers and late boarders, we are due for a special search, and all six bags have to be opened in the special scanner where each of the six is tested for explosive residues. This means each MAP pack is cut open and the contents examined (“Why do you have so many Band-Aids?”) and my over-packed strained Action Packer which ad to take the fast dumping of the stuff I will need for the Nepal extension was checked from top to bottom. Then we went through the boarding gets after Security in which we had to do everything such as take off both shoes and socks—what a great job! I have a reason to be somewhat gingerly about taking off my right sock since I had sprinted in the kick to the Finish Line in Boston and have a very tender subungual hematoma on the longest toenail which will lose that nail within the next few days—a great way to start a trek up the Everest Trek route trail over the Kumbu icefall.
We were then “randomly selected for yet another going over at the gate, with all pockets emptied and the carryon bags contents turned over on the table as I again stood barefoot getting the metal detector wand run over me with a great deal of puzzle about why I should have metal zippers halfway done the legs of my zip-off pants that convert to shorts. But, with this extra security precautions for us late boarders, we are finally sitting in the last row of the 777, and getting as soon as possible after the sinner and drinks into the REM sleep denied to me over the last several days. A cutesy movie with Meg Ryan called Leopold and Kate about a time machine Duke brought to modern New York City into the environment of her market research ad company was all I remembered on the small screen in front of me before the brief nap that now has me over the continent of Europe on my late morning arrival in FRA.
If all is well that ends well, why does the process itself have to be so difficult with the reinvention of each wheel before it can fly? Is there any step in these processes that I can take for granted these days without finding to my surprise that a triple checked gig is not on the day and time it has been scheduled and re-confirmed or that the timing of the arrival of a paid for shuttle is within an hour of its proposed timing after the instructions on how to get to my house are phoned in for a third time and never relayed to the Ethiopian van driver who himself is at his wits’ end and panicked as he is lost? I am glad I do not have to go up front and give the crew of this 777 any last minute instructions in how to do their job, since I fully expect to arrive in FRA for the onward connections and not to appear in Reykjavik, since it was all they could find on the map they had which only included this page after the Gaithersburg page of Montgomery County! I found my way to Boston from Hopkinton, with the help of one and a half million screaming spectators, perhaps I should scream a bit more to help the process along!
FRANKFURT:
ARRIVAL IN THE MID-EUROPE
“EUROPE CITY” OF THE NEW EURO COMMON CURRENCY,
WITH AN HOUR AND A HALF TO SPARE
FOR THE DELHI CONNECTION
OK, we are almost back to where we should b e, and barring any other last minute reinventions of the next wheel, I should be able to turn over the responsibilities of the trip logistics to a group, rather than pulling the wagon as well as driving it.
The European common currency is getting clever ads on the videos shown to arrivals, so that everyone knows that individual currencies can still be used until January, but that all change will be given in any of twelve countries in Euros, and after January, only Euros will be acceptable in payment as well. So much for the beloved pound sterling, Deutschmarks, Drachmas, liras, francs, each of which currency I had collected from my various travels, and I had kept records of the dates and exchange rates each time I came through to exchange in each of the local currencies—a practice I still use, despite such places as the Turkic Republics or residua of the USSR—like Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgistan, all of which only use their local currency under duress, when dealing with an American, who carries the far to be preferred golden greenback—the world’s “Eurocurrency.”
I have set out on my usual “Juice Junkie” search for a hot wire, and found the same (only) one I had used before, despite the massive size and complexity of the FRA complex. It is not very computer user friendly, but, then, I did not have to sit on the bathroom sink with the plug into the one shaver outlet that I had found in the AMS Schiphol airport, as I did both coming and going out of the last trek. In FRA there are multiple electrical outlets, which I had formerly seen here, now represented by holes in the wall where they have been excised. Even the ones that are usable require two adapters to the twin round pins in a recessed socket—but fortunately I have just such an adapter to get me into the wall current, which is also a different voltage than he US 110 AC, that –again fortunately—my universal step-down transformer can handle. So, your story will at least start intact for “Dharam-02,” and I may be able to charge up the laptop to work in the next long flight to Delhi to make the prior trips Ladakh-01 and Spiti-01 intact, eventually, as well. I know I will be arriving at the little hotel in Delhi after midnight, eager for one thing more than any others—a hot shower—and then can recharge what batteries I may flatten in flight before getting up early to take off for the train to Chandrigarh, to get started on tomorrow’s long surface travel to Dharamsala into the first of the Himalayan mountain ranges, the Dhaulidar—the ”White Range.”
I am making my way closer to the destination as I continue dropping ten hours (and a half) off the watch. The stop in FRA got the laptop battery charged and a third person joined us, now Kathryn from Cincinnati is on board. She is a third year medical student who was born in Toledo and stayed back a year in medical school so that she has an extra set of electives this year and four months next year. Her father is from India and she was brought here at age one year to see the grandparents at Simla. She got so sick at that time that her mother would never allow her to return to India since then. Both grandparents are no longer alive but she has uncles in Delhi she will see upon return. I do not know whom else we will see in Delhi or beyond, but at present, there is only one of us with a license, and a third year student, and a freshman who is from GW. I do not know whom else might be here since I got the email that Megan has been refused permission to come to India since it is presumably at war, according to her medical school, and that makes the India Pakistan conflict a too dangerous place to be working among peaceful Buddhists in little Tibet far away from any area of conflict.
So, after having rolled with each of these punches at the outset of this long trip to Dharam-02 and Nepal-02, let the games begin!