Back home... almost

Well, I'm back in the United States, though not home yet, after one of the most truly awful travel days I've ever endured. I'm in Atlanta (Decatur, technically) at my friends A. and J.'s place, and my friend P. is coming into town to get me later this afternoon.

The semi-short version of the trip back:
* Packing the van went fine, getting to the San José airport went fine, checking in & boarding went fine -- other than being 30 min. late to leave (nothing too unusual about that) and other than the idiot travel agent from the University misbooking the other two professors to return from a five-week program on June 22, not July 22. Had she booked me correctly the first time, instead of misbooking me to the wrong side of Costa Rica, that probably would have happened to me too). They were able to get rebooked onto our plane, though.

* The flight... 20-30 minutes in, we hit some nasty turbulence. OK, it wasn't fun, you get anxious & what not, but we've all been through turbulence. It calms down a bit... and then, boom... we suddenly hit a cell of turbulence like nothing I've ever been through -- food trays & other loose items go flying, people are screaming, and we nosedive for a very short while-- 5 seconds? Enough to register that we're falling fast & at a sharp angle vertically, and a far more banked horizontal angle than planes usually fly. The guy in the seat next to me, on his way back from his honeymoon, reaches to grab something, & instead of his table, latches onto my food tray with all his might, but misses, sending it flying (although I didn't get splattered by anything worse than ice cubes, he spent most of the rest of the flight apologizing -- and holding onto the seat in front of him with white knuckles). After a few moments of sheer terror, the plane levels out & calm is restored, and the pilot declares, "Whoah. That was not on the radar screen." Not surprisingly, everyone's jittery for the rest of the flight, and the regular turbulence we hit later was much more nervewracking than it'd normally be.

* From there: We land 15 minutes late, no big deal, but we wait on the tarmac for an hour, because there's no gate for us. Our hopes of getting the next-to-last shuttle of the day are dashed. We wait forever for our bags inside customs, get through customs and security smooth, and having had to re-check our bags for delivery on the carousels outside of customs, we wait there for even longer for the bags. Parents/siblings/significant others of our students are now there, & goodbyes are said.

* Our (the profs) luggage takes especially long. The last shuttle to Athens of the night is now promising to wait for us. The Spanish prof's luggage comes, & she makes it to the shuttle.

* Mine finally comes, & I dash over there with over 100 lbs of luggage, huffing & puffing & finally stealing a luggage cart & looking for the right bus spot, & getting sent to the wrong place twice - the van, of course, has left. The driver of the shuttle to Gainesville -- an older woman who's no doubt family, takes some pity of me, & offers to call her boss to see if the boss will allow her to take me after she drops people off in Gainesville, for an extra fee. But the boss says no, & is apparently nasty to her. I call the boss, and fake that I haven't spoken to the driver, and we get into a very nasty conversation - the second it's clear that I'm not happy, she gets defensive, and frankly, I'm just as happy that she feels more attacked than I actually was attacking her, since she's such a nasty person on the phone. (The one other time I used this van service, I had a driver making the occasional racist comment, so I was in no rush to use them again...) I promise never, ever to use their services again, which will be very easy for me to hold true to :) After her testy "good night," I hang up without replying in kind.

* When I call P., he has the smart suggestion of renting a car - alas, after a trip to Alamo/National, I discover that very few rental agencies a) are answering their phones at 11pm on Sunday night, & b) of those that are, most don't do one-way rentals or don't have an office in Athens, & c) Hertz does rentals & does operate in Athens, but had the rate of $169 for one day.

* After some frantic (trust me, an understatement) calling around, I end up taking the Alamo/National shuttle back to the terminal, grab a taxi, spend an insane amount of money on a cab ride to Decatur, & arrive around 12:30am at Decatur, where J. is kind enough to feed me & give me a stiff drink & otherwise get me feeling human again, and I finally collapse.