The Long Trip Home

I finally got home on the 6^th of February after 3 days of traveling.  I started on the 3^rd and I didn’t even leave Iraq.  My flight to Kuwait was very early in the morning on the 4^th.  It was at about 0300.  It’s only an hour flight but we didn’t get into Kuwait until about 0500.  Once we got to Kuwait we had to go through a ton of paperwork and customs.  They told us we were leaving that night so it made going through all of that crap worthwhile.  I don’t know exactly what we did anymore.  I’m pretty sure it was a lot of “hurry here and wait for an hour or two”.  I think we got to the customs lockdown at around 1500….that’s right, I said LOCKDOWN.  Funnily enough it’s an area called Freedom City.  From this point on it’s one disappointment after another.  We were supposed to leave for the flight line around 1730 as our flight was to leave at 2100ish.  For whatever reason that was pushed back to 1830 and then 1845 as they said our flight was delayed.  Not 5 minutes later they said it was back to 1830 and our flight was “ahead of schedule”.  So we are all lined up and ready to go at 1830 and we end up standing there for an hour!!  So it’s 1930 and we finally get on the busses to go out to the flight line.  It’s supposed to be a 30 minute drive and it ends up taking us 3 HOURS!!!  We get to the “rest stop” where we are supposed to take a 15 minute break.  At this point it’s 2130.  Given the way the whole trip had been I said the 15 minute break would be closer to 45 minutes.  Sure enough I was right.  At 2215 we finally leave the “rest area” and get to the plane we are to take to Germany at 2245.  That’s right, another 30 minutes to go maybe 4 miles.  I don’t think these bus drivers could go above 10 miles an hour.  When we get to the plane a guy gets on the bus and tells us that if the wheels aren’t up by 2330 it could be 2 to 4 days before we get the chance to leave again.  So we have 45 minutes to get the baggage under the plane and get us in it.  The baggage detail had all 100 bags under the plane in 4 minutes!  We sat on the busses for another 15 minutes before they told us we could board the plane.  By 2315 we are all on the plane with our carry ons secured….plenty of time to take off right?  Nope!!  The last 15 minutes some maintenance guy was on the plane trying to get a COFFEE POT to work!!!!!  At 2331 the captain gets on the speaker system thing and apologizes for not being able to take us home today but they will get a hotel and be ready to take us to Germany in the morning.  Oh, and the maintenance guy “finished” while the captain was on the speaker system.  The captain didn’t leave the plane until we were all off the plane.  I think he was afraid he would get attacked or something.  The only good thing that came out of this was that we weren’t going to have to wait 2 to 4 days before being able to leave.  Our entire luggage stayed underneath the plane.  The next morning, about 9 hours later, we go through the whole process again only this time it took us an hour to get to the flight line and we were only waiting on the plane for a half hour before we were able to take off.  I think the KBR guy who was in charge of getting us to the flight line the day before purposely delayed our arrival to the flight line so the pilot didn’t have to fly us that night.  So the flight to Leipzig, Germany was only about 5 and a half hours.  Upon arrival we learned that our layover was going to be 9 hours!!  We just couldn’t catch a break!  I think the layover would have been nice had we been able to actually go walk around the city or something.  Instead we were locked down inside the holding area.  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, thankfully.  I got into Kansas City at about 1100 on the 6^th.  Two other people were going to Fort Riley so we just rented a car together and took off.  The flight they had us scheduled on wasn’t due to leave KC until 1500.  Why wait 4 hours for a 35 minute flight when we could drive the distance in 2 hours?  So that’s what we did. 

 

The kids had no idea I was coming home.  I got home before they got out of school and was waiting on the couch when they arrived.  Kevin about knocked me over and Haylie gave me the biggest hug ever.  She didn’t let go for a long time.  It was a wonderful feeling!