JAN-B-2
THE SCRAMBLE OF THE DEPARTURE AND SHAMBLES OF CONNECTING FLIGHTS
FROM WASHINGTON FROM A MISSED FLIGHT IN IAD, RE-ROUTED THROUGH ORD TO
LAX, WHERE I ATTEMPT TO BOARD PAL 103 VIA HLU TO MNL
WITHOUT MY PASSPORT, CARRYON BAG OR LAPTOP,
UNTIL I MAKE IT ONTO A VERY UNPRODUCTIVE FLIGHT ACROSS THE PACIFIC,
LOSING THE DATELINE DAY,
BUT WITHOUT AN OVERHEAD LIGHT, OR WORKING EARPHONES,
AND WITH A FLAT LAPTOP BATTERY PREVENTING MY WRITING TO YOU---
BUT A FINAL RENDEZVOUS IN MANILA,
AND EVEN A SUCCESSFUL PROCUREMENT OF THE DREAM WEAVERS BOOK
I HAD SOUGHT FOR THREE CONSECUTIVE TRIPS TO THE LAND OF THE TBOLI
PEOPLE
Jan, 9- (10)—11, 2003
This carefully planned and rapidly executed transition from the Florida and Cumberland excursions to the return to DC and launch of the Mission to Mindanao got tripped up into a Charlie Foxtrot from the get go, to make my trip to the far side of the world from which I am typing this arrival response into the very inefficient waste opf a lost day.
I arrived in BWI from my transit through CHL airport—where I could not quite understand why I had landed in the Douglas International Terminal of CHL until later learning that the first fatal commercial air crash in 14 months had closed the domestic terminal to USAir, the carrier that I was flying. There were 21 deaths aboard, everyone on the commuter plane, the same kind I would be taking later the same day in a diversion flight of my own.
At BWI, I engaged the services of a Russian cab driver whom I directed over the back roads through Line Kiln Road to Derwood, where he remarked that it is a good thing I had got him, since other cab drivers would have refused a day earlier when all the hills and turns we negotiated were plugged with new snow. It was a long and expensive cab ride, but it was also the only way we could get to Derwood before midnight to do the repacking to get us on our way in the morning on a month's work abroad... Derwood looked forlorn, as I picked up the interval mail and turned on the heat again (my Aurora Drive house is vacant and has the heat blasting away expensively, as I found in going through my pile of bills due before my return) and Jennifer opened the big boxes she had UPSed to me. WE got the supplies down to three suitcases full, with my big one holding only one third my supplies and all the rest the recent arrival of the fluoride dental treatments UPSed to me by Val Cismoski, our scrub nurse, who had cancelled at the last moment since her 91 year old mother died. She knew it was forthcoming for some time, but had hoped the funeral would have been over by the time of the trips’ departure. This leaves us short the experienced scrub nurse. Jennifer looked around Derwood and its animal menagerie, and I snapped the last of the Photo Works camera’s exposure and began the list of chores to accomplish on the way to Dulles.
I forgot one thing that will remind me of my error later---I left a carton of milk on the table to finish, but it is not only going to be stewing for a month outside the refrigerator but also in the shaft of sunlight that was warming up the Derwood environment and melting the snow around the house. Judy Geelhoed had left a message that she had left in a hurry on the return from our long Needwood run with the twins and left a hair dryer she had borrowed from Eileen in Vienna, and could I return it on my way to Dulles? I packed it up, and made a mail drop of bills paid at 2:00 AM after unpacking from Cumberland and repacking for Mindanao, and also dropped the audiobooks on tape. I drove out to the Malincoff’s and dropped the hair dryer with David who was startled by my appearance on my way to the Philippines, since he had not heard from Judy or Eileen that this item was missing or would be forthcoming.
As we were casually talking about the schedule, Jennifer mentioned she had the same flights as I did but her takeoff was at 12:58 PM, while mine was a 3:00 PM according the printed itinerary I had given her. It was a direct flight on A/A for me from IAD to LAX and she had a flight connecting through St Louis, leaving earlier and arriving later than my direct itinerary. I suggested she simply change her beginning flight to mine, as I would drop off her with the check in bags and the carryons, and then drive down to GW to leave the Bronco—since I am paying a parking fee there in my parking structure identical to the same rate as that at the long-term lot at Dulles , and I did not think that it was a good idea to pay twice over for parking, Besides, I had planned on scurrying along during that two hours at GW, dropping film for development, checking email and making sign out phone calls. Right!
There is no longer any direct A/A service to LAX according to the itinerary for which I was reserved, and I should also be on the St; Louis connecting flight! I heard the news as I parked my Bronco in the hourly rate lot, and came up to the desk to check on Jennifer’s progress in checking in. I also tried to check in for the same flight and then had to scramble. I might still be able to make it to GW, and turn around immediately, with no stop there for any chores, and take the Metro and Washington Flyer back if I scrambled without any carryon or luggage. So, I left my carryon pack (which now recently has changed to include all the cameras and film, exposed or otherwise, since the new high powered X-Ray would blow away all the film in the checked bags,) my laptop, with an extra battery for the long flights across the continent and the Pacific (I was reminded that the chapter due for Surgical Secrets is now past due, so I would do that one first as I crossed the continent) and my passport wallet---all with Jennifer.
I scrambled out of Dulles with the boarding pass for the St Louis flight in my pocket and made my sign out phone calls by the cell phone I would leave in the Bronco on Route 66 as I dropped the Bronco, and ran to Metro. I made a string of very short connections and ran from the Washington Flyer (forgoing the free passage available until January 15 by a coupon I could have cashed in if I had the time) and ran toward the gate via mobile lounge. And then I encountered the new security for the year 2003.
I had to have everything checked including the zippers on my zip-off pants/shorts, and answer questions as to why I should be carrying snacks in my pocket. I was traveling suspiciously light, so they went through everything twice. Just long enough for the careful attention to detail to miss the takeoff of the St. Louis flight, along with Jennifer, my computer and carryo0n and the documents for everything except my flight tickets!
I returned to the A/A desk and got a reservation for the next flight out, that went via commuter aircraft, the same type that crashed yesterday in the details I read on the flight in the newspaper I had picked up at Metro. The flight ground along slowly, and I had no computer nor writing material nor even a magazine, with two books I had packed for the trip in the carryon bag that I no longer had, but was weighing down Jennifer with the cameras and film to be carried on the strictly enforced one-carryon-parcel per passenger.
I called both from Washington and Chicago to explain I would be coming into LAX just after she arrived and would meet at the PAL desk. None of these messages were transmitted via either A/A or PAL airlines, and all the pages I had sent out in LAX terminal for her, and she for me, were never heard, or more likely, never sent. I tried to check in at the desk, with my ticket and the “Docs OK” stamp on them by A/A in Dulles, but they would not allow me check-in without the passport... They suggested I might talk them into letting me go to the gate with my ticket (although without a boarding pass) and try to find her there. I did, and again tried to re-page her; this time I noted no one paged anyone. As boarding time approached in the madding throng of people to board the jumbo 747, I spotted her walking along with an agent who was carrying my bag. His name was Dario, and he had rescued her by carrying my bag through security having it searched and repacked as if it were his own, avoiding the $150 charge for checking my bag, which would have been destroyed going through the high powered X-Ray for all the film it contained. He was very pleasant, as I asked if he could simply take my Passport from the carryon and use my ticket to check me in at the gate, and he did so. He was an Argentine in the US for 12 years and working for PAL as a ticket gate checker. Without him Jennifer would have been totally lost (“My Angel” she called him) and I would not have got on the flight. She had already called MMI and her boss Jerry Kekos, explaining she was on her way to Mindanao alone—and had done this by the “airphone” which has a $5 charge for picking up the phone and $10 per minute charge after that she realized later after the calls she made.
Well, all is well that ends well, right? Now I can settle in to the window seat and do the postponed work I had planned as I go over the Pacific. Right! The overhead lights in the row of seating we were in did not work. OK, I have my headlamp in the carryon and strapped it on my head to write. The earphones did not work, so we could not watch the multiple movies or instructions on the screen. OK, I do not do that anyway often when I have work to do. I could not read my books, but at least I had my laptop at last. OK.
Jennifer had turned it on some fourteen hours before, and it never turn ed off but just ran the battery completely flat )a first, since the light6s did not even blink when the button was pushed) so the laptop is a useless anchor weight to continue to be carried. So, there was no productive activity to be done all across the Continent, and now all across the Pacific, including the later “technical stop” in HLU, when the aircraft is just refueled at a side runway and never pulls up to the gate. We have to make the refueling stop on the westward course, since we are bucking the jet stream, rising as we burn fuel to 36,000 feet for the next 11 hours after HLU to arrive in MNL on the next day dawn, since we cross the International Date Line just beyond Midway as we are traveling westward on the far side of the world opposite the sun, so we are in a two day night, with the date January 10 gone “poof” off the calendar, to be returned as a second January 30 when we fly eastward.
ANY MORE “THRILLAS IN MANILA?”
As I collected the bags in Manila, I could see Allen Mellicor at the reception, who was waiting for two others who had missed their flights, and would straggle in later to day and two who would not make it until 4:50 AM tomorrow, only an hour before we would be boarding the domestic flight to General Santos City (“GenSan” to those of us in the know from frequent touchdowns that far south on Mindanao). We through-checked out bags which meant that I would not have to hassle with all the medical supplies in Manila, and just pulled out my Dopp Kit, being carefully to leave my little Iris Scissors in the checked bag. We would be making three more airport stops today. We drove to the Tropicana Hotel, next door to the Shalom Center where I have stayed the last several times. The Tropicana is a spacious hotel, recently renovated. But, check in time was noon, and we had a lot of time before then.
So, we left our carryon bags---and my laptop on a wall charge to restore its battery—and went to a “typical Philippine breakfast”. It is rice and a dried milk fish (”Banagus”, an aquacultured fish grown in rivers at the tidal junction of the sea in brackish water) following a soy curd called “Taho” swirled with “Sago” a sweet pearled caramelized sauce. A woman with a child was pushing a cart through the street with fresh mangos on it, so in addition to the papaya slices, we had very good mango---welcome to the tropics. We had a drink of the Philippine lemon called “Calamansi”, which look like tiny limes, sweetened with sugar.
We then made what was essentially an all day mall crawl from one bookstore to another in search of the book “Dream weavers” an expensive and colorful coffee table book on the folk-art of the T’nalak. The weaving of the national treasures which I had commissioned on my last several trips, I had purchased in a whole village’s output for the year and wanted those who received this as a gift to know how unique it was. It took all day, but we finally chased down the books and also the video of the weaving process which I know my sisters will really like, since their Christmas presents have been this incomprehensible tapestry I had tried to explain in the text I had given with them.
Interrupting these excursions were returns to the airport to find Alison the anesthetist from Kingston Canada who had been “detained” last year for importing drugs, and a search for a nurse from Alberta named Helen, who had also come from Canada by a different route through Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific. We ate again at the food court in the mega malls with the Philippine mall rats trolling as thought it were pre-Christmas shopping era, and had made multiple trips to retrieve our missing team members. All but three have been accounted for, and those who were drowsy with jet lag had a Chinese dinner last night before turning in at 8:00 PM. I was so drowsy I began deleting large sections of the text of the Cumberland messages when I finally got to the room with some electricity for the laptop, so I am now producing this at 3:00 AM, facilitated by the time zone changes in early rising.
So, I will try to write to you from the next and final flight to the destination f the Tboli people, and then get somewhere in the nearest town, perhaps Koronodal, on the way in under our troop convoy to stop and email you the message that we have arrived at our destination, before our destination overwhelms us with work at a point where no internet transmission will be possible. So, here we are—back in the Philippines on the “Mission to Mindanao-03!”