London to Raleigh and We're Home

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Or the prophetic Cumberland sausage.

We were up at 5 am to be downstairs and checked out of the Sofitel by 6:15 am for our 6:30 am van pickup. Clay had showered last night. When I got out of the shower, he had his phone in his hand and told me he had bad news. The plane we were to depart on at 9:15 am had been delayed leaving ORD and would be at least an hour and a half late departing Heathrow. The notice he read added to come ahead to the airport as if it were going to be on time. So we carried on. We were downstairs when the MB van driver came in looking for us. Good because he went to the Guest Relations desk and that guy phoned our now vacant room. The Ground Transportation desk people did not notice. Clay went over and asked him if he was here for us and he was. We loaded up. About 15 minutes and 26 Pounds later, we were at Terminal 3. It was a good idea to stay at the Sofitel. It was an easy walk even with 4 heavy bags. It was unbelievably quiet and we got a good night's sleep. We only had to pay for transportation one way this morning and that was because we didn't want to struggle physically with the 4 bags taking the free train between terminals 5 and 3.

The van driver got us a luggage trolley outside terminal 3 and loaded it up and we were on our way again. Since the next 2 segments of our AA tickets were Business/First we went to the Priority Line. There were only 2 in line ahead of us, so very little wait. Clay had searched and found an available RDU flight out of ORD 3 hours later. He asked if we could be rebooked and checked through on it. The answer was no. AA considered a 1.5 hour layover in ORD a legal connection and as late as our London outbound was predicted we still had 30 minutes of wiggle room. She gave us our boarding passes and baggage claim slips and wrote directions to the Priority Lounge for us. Security was relatively painless as these things go. (Clay had been through extra screening leaving Nice.) We both passed right through. Fairly short lines everywhere.

We found the lounge thanks to our detailed directions this time. They checked our boarding passes and welcomed us and told us to help ourselves to food and beverages on the buffets and they'd announce our flight and gate when it was time for us to leave. We had breakfast. It was very lucky! Clay's favorite London breakfast is a Cumberland sausage sandwich with HP brown sauce. I went up to the buffet first and they had all the ingredients for Clay to make his own sandwich. I went back and pointed to my plate and said Cumberland sausage. Clay's face lit up and he asked, brown sauce? It is the sausage sign, a prophetic omen of good luck today, I told him. After we ate and before we moved from our table to club chairs, Clay either checked his app or got a notice. Boarding had been moved back another hour. Now it was impossible to make our connection in Chicago. I stayed put while he went back to the lounge's front desk. He was gone 10 or more minutes. He came back victorious with new boarding passes. He was disappointed that I guessed we had been moved to the direct flight to RDU. I was impressed. He said he asked the woman for the later ORD-RDU flight. She typed some and must have seen no availability because she asked him if he'd mind the direct flight instead. It left at noon so we'd have to wait here longer but it was on time and we'd get home earlier. Clay agreed. She said she had to go get permission from her supervisor. Clay waited. He waited while she called the baggage handlers to get our luggage pulled and retagged with the new routing. Now we didn't have baggage claim slips and the new jet's configuration meant Clay had to fly facing backwards. He didn't mind. It would have destroyed me. I got the lay-flat pod directly behind his and facing forward. We both had windows. It was good! Flying home from Europe always seems harder to me because you leave in the morning and it is afternoon when you arrive. It is a long flight and you are awake the entire time. Going over, you sleep most of the flight because it is night time. Clay prefers the coming back flight and says he can't sleep flying over. I haven't ever seen anything keep him awake. Anyway, we were lucky, no ORD connection.

We thought we must be living right with all the excellent good luck. Then our luggage didn't come down the 1 carousel at RDU. We left the controlled border area without our luggage and crossed the terminal to AA's baggage desk. We weren't the only ones. Luckily, it turned out someone had just stopped the carousel and put on the Completed sign before they had delivered all the bags. Our 4 were there with all the others' missing bags. The bad news was that they were on carousel 1 inside the controlled border area and we couldn't go back. It took some time for AA to consult supervisors and come up with enough workers who were allowed to cross the border and bring our bags out to us. So, it all worked out very well in the end. There was no further luggage damage. They delivered our bags on a luggage trolley so we pushed it out to the taxi line. We took the 1st van in line and entered early rush hour traffic. We got home around 5 pm local time. The house and car were both fine, no problems. It was a good finish to a great trip.

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