Home, part 2: Getting home

Our flight landed in San Francisco on time, which is to say an hour later than originally planned. We arrived at about 1:30pm, after having departed Nagoya at about that time. Another reason I had chosen this particular itinerary was that it routed me through San Francisco and Denver on the way to Springfield. I have some buddies in both cities--Evelyn (just back from Tsushima) and Heather in San Francisco, Mary and Kristi in Denver--two of whom I haven't seen in a while, so I figured it'd give me a chance to see them. Heather met me at the airport, and we spent a while catching up. It'd been about three and a half years since I'd been in her neck of the woods, so we had a lot to talk about.

Aware of my still-long layover, I didn't bother checking the flight status for about half an hour. When we finally went to look at the board, I noticed that my connection to Denver had been cancelled. This wasn't the end of the world--I had a two-hour layover in Denver; I could still catch the next flight there. The lady at the counter put me on one an hour and a half later, which would give me a doable if somewhat rushed layover. Satisfied the disaster had been averted, and completely neglecting to ask what this would do to my luggage, I went to have lunch with Heather.

We hung out for an hour or so, swapping stories about pugs and Bali, and headed back to the flight status board to check on me. My new flight had been delayed half an hour, giving me about thirty seconds to make my connection in Denver. The lady at the counter--a different but equally helpful one--explained that there was another flight to Denver that evening, but there wouldn't be another one to Springfield from Denver until that time the next day. So she routed me through Chicago, where there was an earlier connection to Springfield.

Ever since arriving, the time difference had kept me off-balance. As time passed, I got more and more woozy, so by now I could feel my body sort of shutting down. I was only vaguely aware that the flight to Chicago didn't depart until 11:59 that night--about seven hours later. Heather happily offered to keep me company if I wanted to go hang out in San Francisco proper, but I knew I was fading fast. We said goodbye, and I spent the next seven hours floating around the airport, napping, and avoiding the monitors with CNN and Fox News playing.

The midnight flight to Chicago arrived right on time, and I passed out for the two-and-a-half-hour duration. With the time difference, we landed at 5:45a.m. My flight for Springfield wasn't leaving until 7:50, so I availed myself of a Quizno's breakfast sandwich and a Granny Smith apple, reminding me of how much I'd missed both. The flight left on time.

I got to Springfield right on time, and finally got to see Mom and Dad. Still sort of numb from the time difference and exhaustion in general, I went with them to baggage claim. Mine was, of course, lost. The guy in charge of such things filled out a claim form, misspelled "orange" (?!) when I described any distinguishing characteristics about my bag (a bit of orange ribbon wound around the handle), and gave me the meaningless non-reassurance that they'd get it to me as soon as possible.

Too thankful to be home and too tired to be frustrated about my luggage, I spent the rest of the day like a zombie. Well, except I didn't eat brains. I think.