Well, my trip of a lifetime, a 21 day McCloy Fellowship across Germany, started things off with an adventure all their own. After staying up half of the night trying to figure out how to fit a month's worth of clothes, gifts, toiletries, Colorado ag educational material, a nook, a computer, a camera and other necessities into a carry-on and a backpack (yes, I am one of those people), my awesome mother-in-law and I were off to the airport. Yes, late as usual.
I got to the airport, through security with no major snafus (TSA is a subject for another day) I was at the gate and ready to roll... err, fly. Not ten minutes after I sat down my flight into Chicago was delayed, but only by an hour, so I would have plenty of time to still make my connection to Berlin. Oh, check that, now it is two hours. Well, the arrival is getting tighter to my connection, but I should still be able to make it. So time for a bite to eat and in true Nick fashion, set up my blog for my fellowship.
Sometime between then and breakfast, the departure time was delayed another hour, then another, then another. Oops, that last one was a bit too far, so they pulled it back by thirty minutes. At this point I am concerned and in hindsight, I should have just called for a different flight the day before, but here I am, with an extremely delayed flight which gave me zero percent chance of making my connection. So, I guess it is time to play with the voice automated customer service and see if there is anything I can do about my flight.
I hop on the phone and less than a minute in I hear something strange. A real, live person! I tell her my situation and she proceeds to tell me that I'm not on the flight going to Chicago. Well, that was news to me. At some point US Airway/American Airlines/Didn't they just merge and why is it this hard had re-routed me through Dallas to New York JFK to Berlin. They just neglected to inform me. On top of that, I found this out while my new flight was boarding. In a rush, a new ticket was issued and I sprinted down the ramp to catch my new ride to Berlin, still on the phone trying to confirm my tickets for my next two flights, hopefully before the flight attendant (who was amazingly patient with me) makes me hang up the phone.
Success! My two new plane tickets had been reissued and I had a guaranteed ride to Deutschland. Now, while I "had" the tickets, my new schedule was fairly tight and any more hiccups and making across the Atlantic was going out of the question. So, I hit the ground running in Dallas and had my boarding pass issued just as the last group was boarding the plane and made a long hike very quickly through JFK airport and got there just as they were starting to board.
With only the last leg of the trip in front of me and physically being on the plane, I was able to relax, take a deep breath and settle in for a long plane ride east and try to get some shuteye. It just goes to show you, you can take the boy off the farm, but sometimes he still has to deal with a lot of fertilizer, of the organic sorts. So the day turned out to be longer and much more of an adventure than I had planned on. But to tell you the truth, now that it turned out ok, it just added to the fun. So I made it to Berlin, a little tired, but excited nonetheless. I am looking forward to learning everything I can from our soon to be German farmer friends and sharing my experiences with you. So follow along, there is surely more to come.
Cheers,
Nick
