Home At Last

With over 24 hours spent traveling, we finally made it home about 12:30 AM Saturday morning. When our first flight of the morning was delayed, the rest of our trip was totally messed up. There was apparently some sort of storm in Amsterdam causing all sorts of delays. We waited in line for over two hours in Amsterdam just to rebook our flight out. We had to take a number and wait for KLM personnel to rebook the flight. Our number was 75. The line was moving along fairly well until about 12 PM, when the KLM employees started packing up and leaving. I hoped that they were leaving on flights and not just going to lunch. Finally at one PM it was our turn to rebook. We were booked on a plane leaving at 1:15, but it was delayed too. We were able to go and have some lunch which included a beer while we waited on our flight home. The good news was that our luggage made it to Detroit with us. We had been told there was a 75% chance that our luggage would not make it with us to Detroit. Once at Detroit, you have to gather your luggage to go through customs and then re-check it. I have to say that the Americans have the most convoluted, repetitive, stupid customs of any place I have ever traveled. Once we had our luggage through customs, we had to rebook our next leg of the trip to OKC and then re-check the luggage and then go through security - again! As we came through security, the lady who looked at our boarding pass said something about hurrying. We had not even looked at our pass yet. The current time was 7:50 PM and our flight was at 7:40 PM! We took off running across the Detroit airport which was up and down stirs and escalators. With sweat pouring off our bodies, we arrived to find out that our plane had been delayed. We had time to go potty and buy a bottle of water before loading onto the small plane for OKC. We made it the last leg of the trip, but our luggage did not. Hopefully in the next day or two, someone from OKC will bring our luggage. We rented a car and drove on home arriving after 12:30AM. It was so good to see my dogs and sleep in my own bed.

You may think that all of that was wild and crazy, but it was really okay. There was not much point in getting crazed by the delays. There were lots of people in the same boat or worse. We met lots of fun people while waiting in line and had some good laughs - like the couple from Kansas City, the man from Aberdeen going to Uganda, and the family trying to get home to Michigan for a funeral. The only really downside was that we were just so tired.

After having a nice breakfast with Jesse this morning, we headed into town to return the rental car. We went by to see the Grand Babies who were doing well and were highly entertaining. We went to Wal-Mart for some groceries and to TSC for horse feed. We took a big nap this afternoon and later walked the trail across our property. It is good to be back in OK doing normal, everyday stuff.