. . . and for a relaxing evening after a hard day diving . . .
Neal writes: It ain't over until the large lady sings
When we got ready to leave our driver stood us up!
The boat captain has a side job as a taxi/limo (think minivan) driver.
Since we had known him for seven years we thought, what the heck,
let him make a few extra dollars. WRONG!
We had to be at the airport three hours early (5:30 a.m.).
When the driver still hadn't shown up at that time,
we schlepped all our gear to the front office to see if anyone was around
who could call our regular driver, Bernard.
THANK GOODNESS one of the staff had come in early
and was able to contact him. After an exciting ride to the airport
(during which we almost made a head-on introduction to some late night
[or very early morning] students on their way back to their digs
[on the wrong side of the road]), we finally got to the airport,
checked in, went through security and got on the plane.
Then the captain made an announcement that one of the tires
seemed to have a problem and they were checking it out.
The next thing we knew, we were told to take all our personal items
and carry-ons and go back into the terminal.
Thankfully, we were able to bypass customs & immigration
and were let into the departure lounge by a back door.
Once inside it was announced that the airplane had a flat tire,
and THERE WERE NO MECHANICS ON GRENADA
CERTIFIED TO CHANGE THE TIRE!
American was flying in two mechanics from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This would take several hours.
(It turned out to be about 5-1/2 hours).
American Airlines rescheduled our connecting flights,
with no regard as to whether we actually would able to
make/keep the connections. Since we were flying into Miami
and would have just over one hour to make a connection,
I approached the gate agent and expressed my doubt
at being able to make that connection.
(If you've ever been through Miami immigration and customs,
as I have been many times, you know it is terribly slow).
I was told that I shouldn't have made that booking!
I said, "I didn't make any booking -
this is what showed up on my iPhone app -
YOU made the booking".
The agent became angry and said she hadn't booked anything.
I said, "All right then, YOUR AIRLINE, the people you work for,
made the booking, and I don't think it's a good one".
She told me that adjustments would be made if it didn't look like we
(Barb, Lori & I) could make the flight (Mike had left the day before,
after a two-hour delay).
We waited, and waited, and waited some more.
Sometime during this wait, I was able to email Andréa
to have her tell the limo company in that my flight was delayed
and we would update them after I got back in the USA.
After about three hours, some commissary carts appeared
and they fed us all a meal. Finally at about 2:30 we were told
to get in line and re-board the aircraft.
Takeoff was uneventful.
And, as I had predicted, we missed the connecting flight in Miami
and had to rebook another. Fortunately we were able to get on a flight
to Chicago that night, arriving after midnight
when we should have been on the ground by 5 p.m.
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