Date: 2009-12-12
To: Why I love traveling overseas
Miles today: 0.0

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 500 finally pulls away from the gate and taxies toward the far end of the runway. After the flight attendants take their seats, I hit the little silver button on the inside panel of my console and slowly ease the seat back away from it¢s ¢full upright (and most uncomfortable) position¢ ¢ in deference to the missing disks in the lumbar region of my back. Dusk is settling over Nairobi airport, and low-hanging clouds obscure the mountain peaks off to the West. I¢m looking forward to catching a few ¢zzz¢s¢ on the way to Addis Ababa and my connecting flight to Rome and then Washington. As always, I close my eyes as we being our roll, and mentally estimate the increasing speed, knowing that somewhere around 120 mph the pilot will rotate the nose of the plane and then, somewhere around 140 mph (Inshalla), aerodynamic forces will lift us off the ground. So I¢m listening to the whine of the engines and counting up the estimated speed as the wheels thump ever-more quickly over the section dividers of the concrete runway. We reach somewhere around 90 mph when suddenly ¢ and without any warning ¢ the pilot cuts the engines and stomps on the brakes. That pretty much captured everyone¢s attention, including mine. We come to a shuttering ten miles an hour, wheel sharply to the right at the end of the runway, and begin a slow taxi back toward the terminal. ¢Well,¢ I said to the young Israeli businessman in the window seat to my right, ¢that was fun!¢ We laughed, a bit nervously, and waited for the pilot to explain himself. Only after we reached the gate did he mutter something about ¢mechanical difficulties¢, and said we should remain on board.Not long after, a couple of mechanics hiked up the aisle to the flight deck for a consult. Experienced travelers can probably guess the subsequent sequence of events: wait 20 minutes and then be told to disembark, as the flight ¢might have to be cancelled¢; sit around in the hot and crowded gate area waiting for some further word; finally an announcement is made that "a decision is expected within the next 20 minutes¢; we head back to the business class lounge where my two colleagues and I had last managed to get a couple of bars on our cell phones; reaching there, we try a variety of techniques to get through to our employer¢s travel office to ask for their help in re-routing us back to Washington. None of us could get a phone call out, but I managed to text my wife, asking for her intervention. Before she could respond, my young Pakistani colleague reached her fianc© in New York, who contacted them, who contacted her. Progress¢¦sort of. The travel agent said there were three seats on a British Airways flight leaving in two hours, one in Business and two in Economy Class. By the time we had ¢odd-maned out¢ for the better seat, however, the agent said, ¢Oops, now there¢s only one left, in Economy Class.¢ We passed. Just about then, they announced that our flight to Addis was NOT cancelled, and would take off at 9:30, which it finally did, but at closer to 10 pm. Our connecting flight to Rome was due to take off 15 minutes BEFORE our newly estimated arrival time in Addis, but we were ASSURRED that those traveling on to Washington didn¢t need to worry, as our seats ¢would be protected¢. You can guess the rest. Our seats may have been ¢protected¢, but that didn¢t seem to prevent the Rome flight from taking off without us. You can probably also imagine the chaos at the transfer desk at the terminal in Addis as a couple of hundred hot and tired travelers descended simultaneously, just after mid-night, on the three tired-looking agents behind the counter. An hour later, we had new boarding passes for a flight to Paris. Unfortunately, it wasn¢t due to take off for about 24 more hours. We were given the usual hotel vouchers, meal vouchers, transfer vouchers, and abject apologies, after which we collected our transit visas and headed for Passport Control. My Chinese colleague sailed through, but my young Pakistani colleague was informed that she could not enter on a transit visa as there are apparently no diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Pakistan. See, that¢s what I like about overseas travel: You¢re constantly learning new and interesting facts. We, of course, were not about to abandon her to sleep on a bench in the airport by herself, so we launched the usual onslaught on bureaucratic officialdom, initially to no avail. In the end, however, our persistence paid off, and we wore them down to the point where ¢ with a little help from the Ethiopian Airlines representative ¢ all three of us were allowed to proceed to baggage claim. Where, as some of you no doubt anticipated, we spent about 20 minutes climbing over piles of other peoples¢ luggage in a fruitless search for our own. Giving up, we inquired about the hotel transfer bus, and were led toward the exit by a reasonably helpful bus person. Just as we approached the door to the parking lot, however, the skies opened up and a torrential rain storm swept across parking lot ¢ at the far end of which sat our ride to the hotel. That pretty much put a capper on our journey from Nairobi to Addis, but being experienced travelers all, we simply pulled out an assortment of rain jackets, trench coats and umbrellas, and headed for the bus. I¢m typing this now in my room at the Intercontinental, which is reasonably comfortable, and seems to have at least intermittent internet connections. We¢ll know for sure if I am able to actually post this journal entry. From here we fly to Paris on Ethiopian Airways, and then on to Washington on Air France, with an ETA of about 1 am Sunday morning. That¢s the PLAN, not to be confused with how things may actually work out. I¢m watching CNN as I type this, however, and I just noticed one of those little news items that scrolls across the bottom of the screen ¢ something about an Air France jet having some kind of difficulty in the air near where their last ¢missing aircraft¢ incident happened. Sigh¢¦Life is just SOOOO much simpler on the trail. Only 190 more days!