Woke up feeling and refreshed after our flight from Lima, Peru to Dallas, Texas. The seats in business class recline almost totally flat. You do sort of feel like you are in a MRI tube at the feet and I woke up sweating because I put a blanket over me. So Because I had a pair of exercise shorts under my pants off they went and I was doing great. We boarded around 2:00a.m. and I slept until 7:00 - pretty great way to pass the night.
They served up a pretty good egg dish with a spicy sauce, some potatoes and a couple of pieces of sausage. Some juice, coffee with milk - with a small bun and strawberry preserves finished off the meal.
Passed through customs - I had not experienced the new kiosk procedure before. You scan your passport and the kiosk takes and image of you and prints it on your form to hand over the the customs agent. You just answer a couple of questions about where you were and why you are bringing back with you and - back in the USA!
Collected our bags and handed off to the transfer agent from American and went to see where our plane would be leaving from. Now the fun started..... Our flight 2303 was cancelled (mush to our surprise). When I turned on my phone for the first time in 3 weeks I had a message from Sarah and Rich Rediker talking about the "problems" in Chicago. I had given Sarah our flight info and she was following and saw ours was cancelled.
We walked over to the American flight assistance desk and soon realized it was not just us. Eventually about 2,000 flights were cancelled into and out from Chicago because of some knuckle-head starting a fire at the Aurora :
:Here's a summary
The agent said our best bet with a guaranteed 1st class seat was to fly to Denver at 2:55 in the afternoon and then connect to O'Hare later getting home around 8:00. It was around 9:15 in the morning and this seemed pretty bad to me. She wait listed us for the next scheduled direct flight to ORD leaving around noon. Because we were flying 1st class we were numbers 2 & 3 on the wait list. So we had a great chance of getting out of Dallas on that flight but sitting in coach. We decided that this was the best option - the flight was just 2.5 hours or so anyway and the flight from Denver to ORD had no 1st class seats anyway.
We got on that flight and left about 12:30 - arriving around 3:00. The luggage area at O'Hare was just chaos. Bags were coming off the belts and were stacking up all over the place in no particular order. Since we really didn't know what flight our bags might be on we kept watching as bags came off from Dallas. Connie finally got in the line to talk with a agent and we were told our bags were coming on the NEXT arriving flight from Dallas. So we went to that carousel and they came off after 2 hours of looking.
I really should have taken an image of the arrivals board with almost every flight listed as CANCELLED but didn't. Oh well......
The cab driver that took us to the airport on the beginning of the trip was with another fare but he texted us that his son would pick us up. After we got the bags we tried to text him and he never replied. I called his number and he said he waited for us for a while but then left with another fare. That was ok with me - I wanted to make sure he wasn't still waiting for us after al that time. We called the automated number for American Taxi and we were headed home a few minutes later.
Just in time for Friday rush hour traffic on 294. Basically bumper-to-bumper from O'Hare to Cermak when it final opened up. Well, all's well that ends well and we were home. It could have been much worse for us after all.
So another wonderful vacation is over. Next trip seems to be either Sri Lanka or New Zealand. I vote for the Kiwi's!
Here is the only image I took yesterday. We had just awakened and were waiting for breakfast.
Passed through customs - I had not experienced the new kiosk procedure before. You scan your passport and the kiosk takes and image of you and prints it on your form to hand over the the customs agent. You just answer a couple of questions about where you were and why you are bringing back with you and - back in the USA!
Collected our bags and handed off to the transfer agent from American and went to see where our plane would be leaving from. Now the fun started..... Our flight 2303 was cancelled (mush to our surprise). When I turned on my phone for the first time in 3 weeks I had a message from Sarah and Rich Rediker talking about the "problems" in Chicago. I had given Sarah our flight info and she was following and saw ours was cancelled.
:Here's a summary
The agent said our best bet with a guaranteed 1st class seat was to fly to Denver at 2:55 in the afternoon and then connect to O'Hare later getting home around 8:00. It was around 9:15 in the morning and this seemed pretty bad to me. She wait listed us for the next scheduled direct flight to ORD leaving around noon. Because we were flying 1st class we were numbers 2 & 3 on the wait list. So we had a great chance of getting out of Dallas on that flight but sitting in coach. We decided that this was the best option - the flight was just 2.5 hours or so anyway and the flight from Denver to ORD had no 1st class seats anyway.
We got on that flight and left about 12:30 - arriving around 3:00. The luggage area at O'Hare was just chaos. Bags were coming off the belts and were stacking up all over the place in no particular order. Since we really didn't know what flight our bags might be on we kept watching as bags came off from Dallas. Connie finally got in the line to talk with a agent and we were told our bags were coming on the NEXT arriving flight from Dallas. So we went to that carousel and they came off after 2 hours of looking.
I really should have taken an image of the arrivals board with almost every flight listed as CANCELLED but didn't. Oh well......
The cab driver that took us to the airport on the beginning of the trip was with another fare but he texted us that his son would pick us up. After we got the bags we tried to text him and he never replied. I called his number and he said he waited for us for a while but then left with another fare. That was ok with me - I wanted to make sure he wasn't still waiting for us after al that time. We called the automated number for American Taxi and we were headed home a few minutes later.
Just in time for Friday rush hour traffic on 294. Basically bumper-to-bumper from O'Hare to Cermak when it final opened up. Well, all's well that ends well and we were home. It could have been much worse for us after all.
So another wonderful vacation is over. Next trip seems to be either Sri Lanka or New Zealand. I vote for the Kiwi's!
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