Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Day 8: Venezia to Nuevo York to LAX to Oceanside

Up at 6am, breakfast at 7.30am, water taxi at 8am. On the crowded water taxi, we found out that our plane had been delayed, for it was coming from JFK to us, and JFK was in a blizzard. So Delta sent another plane from Atlanta, but it was 4 hours late. So, we would wait at Marco Polo Airport for an extra 4 hours... with Team Abercrombie.

Team Abercrombie: a group of about 30-40 young college students who appeared to be on the first 'vacation' away from Pops and Mom. You get me here? All decked out in their finest Hollister and Abercrombie... some in thier Louis Vuitton bags and all bitching and whining about getting back to the States and how the lines were so long.

They somehow seemed to typify American youth culture in every bad way. Really. Loud, obnoxious, rude, amazing.

So, Holly and I grabbed a few Bellinis. I mean, sure it's only 10 in the morning now, but a little alchohol might mellow our nerves.

We finally board and take off. Oops! They forgot the inflight movie. No big deal, the flight attendant (who got chummy with Team Abercrombie) asked one of the college kids to sing over the intercom! Where am I?!? 42,000 in the air, and some kid is singing New York, New York on the intercom.

It's like a party plane. I cannot even get back to the lavatories because those damn kids are in the aisles! What is going on?!? Seriously. What is going on? There's a party going on, and no one seems to be doing anything about it! 9.5 hours of this. Wow.

So, eventually landed in JFK (where at this point there was 1.5-2 feet of snow on the ground). Deplaned. Called Jesse to tell him I'd be late (eventually he would find out that I was about 6 hours late and got in another line to claim our bags and recheck them through to LAX.

They had already booked us on a Monday (today is Sunday) flight in the evening. Delta was expecting us to get a hotel room and hang longer with Team Abercrombie...

The gods favored us! There was two seats (albeit middle seats on different rows) available on the late flight to LAX! Praise God!

As we were speeding up to take off on the main runway, we could feel our plane sliding all over the tarmack. i guess it was just that icy. Wow. Terryfying.

No sleep on the 6 hour flight back to LAX, but so good to see Jesse and our car and our home. Our trip had ended... or had it... still another 2 hours of driving to get home. Wonderful, so we stopped at Denny's.

Wonderful trip. Would visit Northern Italy again in a heartbeat... but they can keep Rome!

Ciao e Arrivederci!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ryan,

Welcome home...I was directed to you by Jason (livinghome). When you're back in town and settled let me know, I'd like to talk to you about the church plant you were involved in.

D. Goodmanson