Day 1: Thursday, January 12, 2006
The majority of the team left out of Oklahoma City without a major glitch; Kellye left DFW an hour late. However, we all had plenty of time in Chicago to wait thanks to the early departure times from our respective homes. So, there were no major glitches in departing Chicago as a full team when the plane boarded on time.
We were forced to contend with the notion of “losing time” (like it was ours to gain or lose) as we crossed the Atlantic Ocean and had a short night enroute to London. For those reminiscing, the sequence of events went something like this:
5:30 p.m. Departure from Chicago
6:00 p.m. Beverages were served along with breadsticks that had been marinated in Worchester sauce (no amount of liquid was enough to get them down)
6:30 p.m. Supper / Dinner in tandem with a 2 hour movie; no there was not time for one before the other if there was to be any rest at all.
8:30 p.m. An attempt to “settle down for the night:” and get some sleep (or at least rest for those who can’t seem to sleep on airplanes).
5:00 a.m. London time. This is where the loss of 6 hours of time occurred with the realization that one had only had the opportunity to doze for about 3.5 hours +/- available.
5:30 a.m. Breakfast with a kid’s size serving of tea or coffee (certainly not enough to rouse one from their dozing activities), a muffin, orange juice and cup of flavored yogurt.
6:20 a.m. Touchdown with the cry of a child, “Our plane is sinking”; a weary gratitude and an acknowledgement of not being even “half way there yet” after re-assessing the reasons we had stayed awake:
Our knees were touching the back of the seat in front of us and the person sitting in that seat wrestled “all night” with the thoughts of "jumping in Grandma’s feather bed”;
The non-harmonious but concurrent cries of at least two infants / small children;
The turbulents that the pilot managed to find as he sought to stay awake rather than doze.
The realization that your feet and ankles (particularly the right one on which you broke 2 toes about 3 weeks ago) were swelling and there’s no way to massage them given the tight seating in which you literally have to crawl out of sideways just to get to the aisle.
Submitted by Kellye J
We were forced to contend with the notion of “losing time” (like it was ours to gain or lose) as we crossed the Atlantic Ocean and had a short night enroute to London. For those reminiscing, the sequence of events went something like this:
5:30 p.m. Departure from Chicago
6:00 p.m. Beverages were served along with breadsticks that had been marinated in Worchester sauce (no amount of liquid was enough to get them down)
6:30 p.m. Supper / Dinner in tandem with a 2 hour movie; no there was not time for one before the other if there was to be any rest at all.
8:30 p.m. An attempt to “settle down for the night:” and get some sleep (or at least rest for those who can’t seem to sleep on airplanes).
5:00 a.m. London time. This is where the loss of 6 hours of time occurred with the realization that one had only had the opportunity to doze for about 3.5 hours +/- available.
5:30 a.m. Breakfast with a kid’s size serving of tea or coffee (certainly not enough to rouse one from their dozing activities), a muffin, orange juice and cup of flavored yogurt.
6:20 a.m. Touchdown with the cry of a child, “Our plane is sinking”; a weary gratitude and an acknowledgement of not being even “half way there yet” after re-assessing the reasons we had stayed awake:
Our knees were touching the back of the seat in front of us and the person sitting in that seat wrestled “all night” with the thoughts of "jumping in Grandma’s feather bed”;
The non-harmonious but concurrent cries of at least two infants / small children;
The turbulents that the pilot managed to find as he sought to stay awake rather than doze.
The realization that your feet and ankles (particularly the right one on which you broke 2 toes about 3 weeks ago) were swelling and there’s no way to massage them given the tight seating in which you literally have to crawl out of sideways just to get to the aisle.
Submitted by Kellye J
posted by Jean Warner at 7:00 PM
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