OK.....when I left off last time we were in Ramstein, Germany, having arrived there on Saturday night after a long journey. The hotel was awesome, I have included pics. It was a $39 luxury hotel in a huge building with incredible shopping and restaurants....oh, how I wanted to shop, but could not buy anything due to having only one piece of very tightly packed luggage.....and very little money to spare. I wanted to stay here so badly for a few days because there was SO much to see here in the beautiful Rhine Valley, but we had been told always to be sure to take the first flight out that we could, so we checked the flight schedule. Sure enough there was a trip directly to Charleston on Sunday, the next day. So we checked out of our hotel and walked across the street to the passenger terminal. There was a fight out to Charleston that morning....wow, were we lucky or what? So we signed up for the flight and nervously awaited for roll call as more and more people came in, many of them military dependendents, which had priority over us. There were 32 seats available and about 80 persons wanting to go, so needless to say, we did not make the cut. SO what now? No flights to Charleston for at least the next 2 days, and I knew I had to be back to work on Saturday. But there was a flight to McGuire the same afternoon, and a flight from McGuire to Charleston the next morning at 7:30....no brainer...we are going. So we flew out of Ramstein on a C-17 cargo plane (see pics attached) filled with lots of cargo including a 10,000 piece of communications equipment....tight squeeze but they took 31 passengers, including us. It was a 9 hour flight with 100 mph headwinds over storms, but the awesome US Air Force got us there safely. We touched down in McGuire and got another $39 room there with a 5:30 wake up call so that we did not miss the early morning flight to Charleston. Bleary-eyed we got to the airport and awaited roll call. We made the cut again! Then we were called to check in where they took our luggage...check....another move closer to C-ton. Then came the word, the dreaded word...the flight to C-ton is cancelled. A European dignitary had gotten the plane to shuttle him somewhere with his entourage.....so we were bounced off. The only other option for us was to fly to Andrews and hope for a hop to C-ton from there...so on to Andrews. Once there were found that there were 2 flights to C-ton.....the next day......uh-oh....knowing how frequently flights were cancelled I was not too keen on waiting around for another day and incurring another night's lodging expenses. There was Tom and I as well as 3 other men wanting to get home to Charleston so we rented a small SUV from Hertz and headed South. Yippee!!!! We were on our way home. One of the other drivers was a full Colonel with 43 years military experience and the other was a Brigadier General! We were being driven by a Brigadier General who headed up Special Forces in Afghanistan and all over the world. What a nice guy and we had some really interesting conversations coming home. At 8:30 Monday night we pulled into C-ton Air Force Base......what a journey. I did a recap of our trip: hold onto your hat:.....3 cars, 7 planes, 10 trains, 7 busses, 4 taxis and 2 vans including 7 hotels and one timshare. And a partridge in a pear tree. What an adventure....and what amazing people we met. I will be continuing this blog to share some stories with you of my observations and tales of some amazing people....I hope that you stay with me. And thanks for following our adventures........it was truly an amazing race!!! Stay tuned and enjoy the pics.....
I have included a sculpture at the Pisa airport of someone looking just like I did after having another flight cancelled.....some of our troops being deployed..I will talk more of them later, and pics of the plane......and a shot of our $8.50 ticket from Europe to the USA...
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