Wheelchair person shows up, a lovely French young lady named Antonette, Mom gets in the chair and Antonette proceeds to show us the hidden elevator which gets us out of the Club and onto the concourse. We go through about seven 'security' barriers, sliding doors, and other things, then we meet a real French security guy who points all of us over to a jetbridge that has a door with a wheelchair picture on it. We get over there and guess what, there's a small version of the vehicles that provision airplanes, the scissor lift kind of things, we roll Mom in there, there's a couple of other chairs, we wait for another couple to get in, they lower us, roll us to the plane, and up we go and enter the plane through the galley entrance instead of the main door. Quite nice and accomodating of them!
Flight left early, got to Chicago early, and we get off the plane and there's another wheelchair waiting for us, and I'm glad there was one, Chicago's International Arrival terminal is huge. A nice Bulgarian fellow named Vladi rolls Mom quickly (and remember, I'm carrying a briefcase with computer and another carry on bag) to passport control where we blow through the crew line, then to reclaim bags, blow through customs, then to recheck bags, then we have to go up an elevator to the tram to the main terminal, then through security again (with really surly people too) and then Vladi wants to roll us to gate H11 where we have three hours until the plane departs, I ask him to drop us by the Club again (but we can't get in this time!). Had some McDonalds bite to eat, walk around the airport a bit, get on the plane to California, Mom's getting tired, eventually we switch seats so Mom's being bombarded with stimulation and we both settle down and nap for an hour or so!
Get to SJC and there's another wheelchair, gotta love American Airlines! Get bags, get to the cab, get to the flat by about 8:45, when I realize that its taken us less than 24 hours from wake up to California, and thats with two hours at the airport in Paris, two hours or so in Chicago, an hour from the hotel to the airport in Paris.
I was up at seven Wednesday morning as was Mom, she wanted to know where we were going!
While I was in the shower Mom had another little bathroom accident, wondering if she does these things just to get my attention? Anyway, off to the grocery store, fish market, noon Mass, then a drive to Mom's. Been home for an hour or so and Mom's into the repeating and reading the ads in the paper to me over and over again!
More later, gotta get back into cooking mode!
No comments:
Post a Comment