Home! Sort of...

Whew... Made it.

So after spending last Friday morning in the field, Friday afternoon driving to Kisumu to catch a short flight to Nairobi, and Friday evening flying from Nairobi to London Heathrow, I finally hit some travel snags...

Knowing that I only had two hours between my arrival at Heathrow and my departure for JFK, I had to hustle from the HUGE British Airways terminal to the equally huge international terminal. After catching the tram and arriving at terminal 3, I checked the boards to see which gate I needed to head to so I could board... Then I saw it: "American Airlines 115- CANCELLED" Uhoh... Looked at the rest of the board... Saw something promising- "American Airlines 215 New York(JFK) @ 11:30" Great! Ran over to the ticket counter to rebook.

Little did I know... Apparently, schools in the UK had just gone on summer holidays the previous day... so every flight was booked/overbooked! And the 1130 flight to JFK was no exception! (nor was the American Air flight from the previous night that was overbooked by 10 people all of whom were then put on stand-by for my flight that was canceled!). So... after reviewing several contingency flight plans that would at least get me to somewhere in the US, we tried a couple different options:
1)Stand-by on the 1130 flight to JFK. While it would have gotten me in too late to make my connection to Baltimore, I figured I could just take a train home from there. Well again this was not to be... The flight was overbooked by probably 10 people, plus the people who were on stand-by already from the previous evening's flight, plus the people who were there from my flight... When they closed the jetway doors, there were still about 50 people standing at the gate... Some were less than happy about the prospect of missing the flight...
2) Heathrow --> Edinburgh --> Newark --> Baltimore... Close but the guy standing next to me booked the last seat from Edinburgh...
3) Heathrow --> Chicago --> Baltimore... Great! But... couldn't get confirmation on the flight from Chi-town to Baltimore... So we decided to pass on that one.
4) Heathrow --> Boston(on Virgin Atlantic) Overnight in Boston, then Boston --> Baltimore on Sunday morning... Ok, at this point, I figured this was about the best I could do beyond waiting til Sunday to leave London. So I took it.

So, when I finally arrived in the United States and was passing through Immigration, the agent asked me "So which flight did you end up coming in on?" I was confused. "Excuse me?" "Well, sir, we have you entering the United States on 4 different flights to 3 different cites today..." Ah... yeah, that makes sense. Anyways, I guess he found it funny and let me back in the country.

Then I headed over to the baggage claim so I could make my way through Customs. I wasn't really in a hurry at that point, I knew I was spending the night in Boston. Even if I had wanted to hustle at that point it was a non-started, it was about 2am to my body at that point... So everyone is grabbing their bags and slowly the baggage carousel becomes distressingly unpopulated with baggage... Thats the point at which a Customs beagle dog comes and sits down next to my carry-on bag... Little son of a gun sniffed out the second half of my chicken finger BLT from the Heathrow TGI Fridays... My dinner was promptly confiscated... Also by that point I realized that my bag was not there and would not be magically coming out either...

Going through customs after being out of the country for 7 weeks without luggage attracts some attention. Especially when when the forms indicate that I had been on 'farms' and had 'exposure to livestock.' The agents were nice enough, but began to give me the 3rd degree about my level of exposure to livestock and 'soil' in Kenya... Luckily, when I explained to them that I was there working with a research group and we did all the rig-amoral associated with biosecurity, it became a much easier ordeal.

The lost luggage lady from Virgin Atlantic wanted to buy me a beer for having the weirdest itinerary and future travel plans... First of all I had a bag that was tagged for British Airway since I had flown with them from Nairobi. Then I was supposed to fly on American, but instead flew Virgin Atlantic, and in between those flights I was standby for a couple other flights on a couple different airlines... My bag could have found its way onto any of those flights by mistake... So she looked in the computer and couldn't find the bag anywhere... British had scanned the bag in Nairobi, but there was no other record of it elsewhere, she said it was possible that since I was bounced around flights that the bag had gotten set aside somewhere in London... So whatever... Next problem... when they do find my bag how should they get it to me...? Well, I couldn't register a lost baggage claim in Baltimore since I would be checking into a flight to Baltimore on a different airline without baggage... So my bag would have to be sent to Boston once they found it. Ok- Well where is my permanent address to which they can send the bag? Um... well I wasn't really heading 'home' at that point. I would be stopping by my parent's house to pick up some clothing, but then I would be heading down to the shore to see them for 4 days... Then I would be flying to Atlanta for 5 days, then Baltimore for one night, then back to the beach for 4 days, then Baltimore for 5/6 days, then I would be heading to my 'permanent' school address on the island of Grenada in the Eastern Caribbean... The poor lady... She had to try to put all that info into the computer for my claim... So we just agreed to have it sent to my parent's address and have one of our neighbors drag the bag into their house until I had the chance to swing by and pick it up...

Anyways, the rest of the trip was fine. The airline put me up in a hotel room that night. It had a bed roughly the size of the room that I had shared for the past 6 weeks with another person, so I was pretty happy. But didn't really get to enjoy the room cause once I sat on the bed, I used all my energy to call the front desk to arrange a wake-up call for 430am the next morning!

Fast forward 24 hours- I'm at the beach with my family. Enjoying the 'heatwave' that happens to be the lead story on the news here. Virgin Atlantic's computer system still hasn't located my baggage, but I am almost resigned to the fact that it may never be seen. There isn't much in there that holds too much value to me that can't be somehow replaced. Such is life! Anyways, I'm glad to be back, but I already miss the work we were doing in Kenya.

Couple days to relax before I head out to Atlanta!