New York to London

October 16 Sun

Today I awoke with excitement and anxiety at the onus of moving along to another continent by air travel. The day of a flight I cannot help but dwell on the fact that everything has to work out time-wise or unpleasant consequences may ensue that I don't even want to contemplate. I was now of a mindset to leave, but there was still half a day's worth of hours to live through before flight time.

Razelle had scheduled one more family-member's visit at Monte and Mindy's. Her first-cousin Nicki lives in Manhattan and was scheduled to arrive at noon. She needed to be picked up at the Baldwin train station, so Monte went after her at the appointed time, and Mindy also left to buy cold cuts for a deli-style lunch in the house. Razelle and Nicki had much to talk about and I was left to my mental checklists and last-minute re-thinking of how to better pack all our luggage than I already had before – in fact, several times before. I interacted with everyone present, somewhat, but my mind was elsewhere. We had reached critical mass with all we had amassed on our journey, and I was more aware of this than anyone else seemed to be.

After photo ops with everyone taking turns being in the shots or taking the shots (Nicki's camera took that momentous occasion to misbehave and not capture the moment) it was time to say good bye to her; Nicki was the last in a long series of relatives Razelle and I had managed to spend quality time with all over this continent. Monte took her back to the station to meet her 6:30 PM train, and when he returned I was ready to pack our bags into his car. 

Even though our flight was scheduled for 9:55 PM I was too antsy to loiter any longer. There were too many unobliging variables to contend with for me to be comfortable waiting any longer. This was it; time for one last set of hugs and good-byes with Mindy. Monte and I struggled with the configuration of the bags in his trunk and finally ended up putting some of them in his back seat; not a reassuring thing at all. As Monte drove us to JFK he gave us an earful about his less-than-pleasant experiences with Israelis, the very people we were imminently poised to return to after some four months separation from them. We pulled up to the curb at the British Airways departure doors and found two luggage carts for all our stuff. One more set of hugs with Monte and we turned, pushing our belongings through the terminal's doors and switched mentally to "airport mode."

The woman at check-in announced that we would have to pay extra for two of our fours pieces of luggage. I firmly held my ground and told her she was misinformed AND mistaken. This went on for a few moments until a supervisor appeared. She had overheard the dispute from a distance and approached the clerk. She informed the clerk that we, as round-the-world ticket holders, were correct in insisting that we were in fact entitled to two pieces of luggage each. The supervisor helped us further by making sure that our luggage would be approved at the next and final leg of our journey so this argument wouldn't happen again. (Our bags didn't all weigh what they should but they were close enough). To further ameliorate the unpleasantness we had just experienced she upgraded our tickets on this flight to London to first class! We gave her one of our Jerusalem refrigerator magnets as a token of our gratitude (to learn that she was Jewish and intended to visit Israel soon herself). After all our concerns about getting this far, everything turned out for the best. We flew to London in the lap of luxury. So this is what it feels like to be in peerage instead of steerage.