Africa: Our LDS Church Mission: The Horrors of Travel

If you haven't flown lately, I would highly recommend it! It gives you an appreciation for the simple life. If they could make flying any more difficult or miserable, I wouldn't know what they could do. From the time you enter the airport and start standing in lines, through security which is a very demeaning process to waiting to board your flight (like cattle through a chute - with the same amount of pushing and shoving and jostling) to sitting in uncomfortable, dirty sardine like seats - it is just not something that you really want to do. I complain now - I can't wait until I report on our trips within Africa, especially to places like Lumumbashi in the Congo (which is coming up soon.)

Here we are in the Chicago Ohare airport looking like two deer caught in the headlights. Pathetic! I don't know how the Church booked our travel but sitting in the airport at the British Airways terminal for 9 hours while watching two other BA flights leave to London didn't seem like good planning! Our tickets were booked 3 months in advance - surely they could have put us on an earlier flight!

Then on to London where we stayed over one night at a local Marriott Hotel in Windsor which was nice. We had hoped that would save the wear and tear on our bodies and our pocketbook - but not so! We had points for the Marriott so we had no charges there. However it cost us a $100 dollars to store our 4 big bags overnight and it cost us $80. to go from the hotel to Terminal 1 by taxi to pickup our bags and load them into the same taxi and then have the taxi take us to Terminal 4. But loading 4 large bags and 3 carry-ons and us into a small taxi was not an easy task - nor a pretty sight. Then when we finally arrived at the airport early (so we could get assigned seats - that's another story - British airways only allows you to receive an assigned seat through the Internet 24 hours in advance, not one minute sooner (which doesn't work I might add) or obtain them at the airport). So, we went early to get decent seats only to find out that after we got our seats that we couldn't check our bags and enter the departure lounge until 3 hours before departure time. And there is no seating before check-in, so the only thing we could do was enter a restaurant and sit there for about 4 hours. If you thought the previous picture was pathetic, look at this one!

After all of this we finally get through to the departure lounge only to find out that our flight was to be delayed by an hour and one-half. We still have a long flight ahead of us and we're already exhausted! But we didn't die - we just hoped we would!

Here's the sad part --- hankies out please. We didn't get to visit Windsor Castle like we wanted to nor have a nice dinner on the bank of the Thames River! Boo!Hoo! But we would have had time - if!!

Finally we arrive in Johannesburg South Africa the morning of September 1, 2007 - ready to begin our new adventure. At this point I had abandoned the tie and mother looked fresh and "chipper" like we hadn't just got off the trip from hell!