Catching Up

Hmmm...where to start.

Our travel to Israel was a challenge because of the winter storm in New England. Kelli, Andy, Bud and I drove from NH to Newark the day before our international flight and stayed overnight. I'm not sure what finally happened to our original Continental flights.

Unfortunately, Carl had a much more difficult time traveling from Indiana because of a winter storm in the mid-west. He was awake at 1 am checking on his flight out of South Bend - which was eventually cancelled. He phoned United and they re-booked him on an American flight out of Chicago. So, Carl's excellent bus adventure began at about 5 am. What typically takes 1 hour to travel by bus wound up taking several hours. It was slow traveling in the bad weather conditions.

In Newark, I was awake at 5:30 am and called Carl, already on the bus. We checked his American flight from our hotel and were loathe to tell him that it, too, had been cancelled. What happened next was nothing less than sheer brilliance combined with shit luck.

Kelli and I logged on to United. We saw that there was a flight from Chicago to Newark at 9 am, arriving at 12 noon. It was sold out. But we knew that there would be at least one or two no-shows because of the weather. United didn't see it our way and refused to sell a seat on this flight.

So, we booked Carl on a 10:30 am flight (arriving at 3 pm - much to late for an El Al flight at 1:30 pm) and told him to fly standby on the earlier flight. We knew he probably would arrive in Newark without his luggage! As predicted, Carl got a seat on the earlier flight, arrived in Newark and discovered that his luggage made too. Unfortunately for Carl, he had to run from terminal A to terminal B to have time to do the Israeli security prior to TSA screening. His luggage remained in Newark.

If the saying "all's well that ends well" is true, then we are no worse for the wear. The five of us arrived safely in Tel Aviv on Monday am, albeit without Carl's luggage. I made him carry mine just to look the part (and to lighten my load!) Our client, the Jewish Volunteer Connection, made several calls for us and Carl's luggage has been forwarded. A few sheckels were spent getting Carl some essentials in the meantime, but all is well that ends well.

Joe