Enfin
August 20
We made it. We had to wait, but we made it.
Our first delay began almost immediately in Portland after we had loaded all our bags onto the biggest cart we could find. I was already wondering how we were going to move this mountain on wheels through Charles de Gaulle aiport when the guy at the Delta counter looked at his computer screen and said, "Uh oh." Our flight was 40 minutes late due to a late arriving crew the night before. Our connection in Cincinatti was blown.
We spent the next 80 minutes cooling our heels while the agent worked the phones trying to juggling alternate flights and even running over to alternate carriers. I stood by ready to give a thumbs up to anything he might come up with while beth sent the kids up and down the escalators. We flirted with a route that featured three different connections including a one hour turnaround in Frankfurt. On top of that we would arrive in Paris only an hour or so before our train was due to depart for Bordeaux. It was that or come back the next day for the same flight as the one we were about to miss…and say goodbye to our train tickets. Impulsively I said yes but for the next twenty minutes as the agent was repeatedly put on hold a growing worry gnawed away at my gut. It all seemed very hasty, very contingent on things going smoothly...each time I turned around to find Beth and the kids I was confronted my our mountain of baggage. Finally I gave in to that inner voice and I told the agent to forget Frankfurt. We'd come back tomorrow. We’d have to eat the train tickets. Immediately I felt better and unless I was imagining things so did the agent.
The net result of all that was a very nice day in the park with Tanya, Ariel, Piper, and Jerry in southeast Portland, another night in a Portland hotel and back at the Delta ticket counter this time at 5:00 am the next morning. Not long after we arrived we were recognized by a Delta staffer who had tried to help us the day before. She made it a point to check in on us for the rest of the morning until we boarded…perhaps our first kind stranger of this trip.
Beth suggested we rent a portable DVD player along with “finding Nemo”. That turned out to be a great idea. Tess and Colm behaved as if we had taken them to the coolest playground ever. The airport, the plane, the dvd, the ipod, their books, all of it intrigued them to no end. They were great travelmates.
In Atlanta we used our meal vouchers from Delta to buy a very large pizza. We could have (probably should have) fed everyone in our area with it. Next to us was a family with three kids – a girl about the age of Tess with pink cowboy boots and a cheerleader skirt, an infant, and a boy about Colm’s age who asserted to all of us, “I can speak English and French.” Turns out he had a French and an American parent. I’m not sure exactly how Tess processed that boy’s proclamation but I couldn’t help but suspect that she might have taken it on some level as a kind of challenge. Beth and I can’t help wondering nearly all the time how this whole thing is going to unfold for our kids. Pretty soon we’re going to have a pretty good idea.
We boarded in Atlanta. I found myself sitting next to a 16 year old girl on her way to Cameroon to rejoin her mother. Her poise impressed me. Each time I see a youngster board a plane without an adult I both appreciate the care given to them by the crew and I think about what giant leap it is for them to make. This girl spoke French and English too. She’d been back and forth to Cameroon since she was six. She smirked at one of the stewardesses when I asked her in French about the customs form they had given all of us to fill out. I assumed, this being an international crew affiliated with Air France that stewardess spoke French but she stopped me and said very haltingly, “Parlez-vous anglais? Je parle un peu de Francais.” I paused and then said, “Oui.”
They pulled our plane away from the gate but then we just sat there for awhile. The girl began to fret. I asked if she was alright. She told that she only had an hour in Paris to make her connecting flight. I told her our story in an attempt to reassure that the airline would take care of her whatever might happen. I wasn’t working, I could tell. Then I asked her if her mother lived near the airport in Cameroon. She gave a look that was both polite and also managed to convey clearly to me that I had no idea what she was going to have to deal with. Then came an announcement that it had been determined that a starter valve in the engine would need to be replaced. They estimated about 40 minutes. No one would be allowed off the plane unless they wished to abort their flight. I could see the girl kind of curl up, close her eyes and try to shut out all that she had just heard.
It was close to an hour and a half when we finally took off. It was a long, long flight but uneventful. The kids slept a fair portion of the last half of it. Beth and I managed to sit together long enough to watch most of an episode of “Lost” on her Ipod. Once we debarked we would have to get our bags, hump them to the TGV ticket center, buy new tickets to Bordeaux (hoping that there was space available), and then call Gerard to arrange to be picked up at St. Jean train station and driven to our new home. The bags…they preyed on my mind, they were heavy and numerous – 2 huge rolling suitcases, another one a tad smaller, another duffle bag, a car seat, a guitar, two normal carry-ons with wheels, two backpack size bags, my briefcase with all of our documents, the laptop case, plus a small backpack for each of the kids.
But I need not have worried. We sailed through Charles de Gaulle airport without a hitch. Our bags were practically the first ones out of the carousel. We found two carts that rolled smooth as skates on ice and less than a half hour after touching down we were at the TGV station lining up for tickets. We had a couple of hours to kill so we went to an open air waiting area where the kids could run around and watch the trains arrive on the level just below them. Beth and I chatted in French with a nice old Filipino woman who was just returning from a family visit in the Phillipines. She complimented Beth on her French…I realize how sweet it is that the two of us will be able to function here in the language.
When the train arrives we are waiting and ready. It whooshes to a stop. We’ve already noticed how efficient the TGV operation is. It won’t be stopped for too long. Beth takes the kids onboard and I start making trips with bags into the intercar area where they can be stored. I see immediately that there won’t be enough room (nor enough time) to store them properly. Plus there is the problem of getting by people who both embarking and disembarking. I throw caution to the winds, I throw bags in the middle of the hallway, I run in and out of the train, alternately leaving bags behind me either on the quai or on the train, all the while nagged by the fear that the train is going to get underway before I’ve finished. By the time I’m finished, I’m really regretting the decision to wear my new brown sport coat.
For all the build up at home about riding on the “super fast train” I must say the experience was an anticlimax. Colm fell asleep soon after we were underway and didn’t awaken until we were nearly there. Tess too slept about half the trip. Beth and I were struggling with jet lag and that bone deep weariness that hurts and yet won’t let you sleep the way you need to. As we neared Bordeaux, four hours later, I began to anticipate one last baggage manouvre. I made a pile of bags in front of the door…about half of what we had. A couple of girls made a similar though slightly smaller pile (all of their stuff though) in front of the other door. Neither of us knew which side of the train we would debark from. It turned out to be mine. More frantic struggles, more “je m’excuse”s. Beth had to waken the kids and urge them out from the far end of the car. Finally we had everything out, the people slipped away, the train left and we were alone on the quai. Across the tracks, an impassable gulf, was the station. I looked around for carts but see none. I looked for an elevator, no dice. I looked for Gerard. Seemed like we had struck out. So I decided to go have a look. If Gerard was looking for us, Beth and the kids and the bags ought to attract his attention, in the meantime I needed to find a way to move those bags.
We finally found Gerard but without spending an hour trying to do so. I called his cell phone from a line near the ticket counters. He said he’d been there an hour. His van was parked out front. As I tried to tell him what part of the station we were in, he finally seemed to recognize the place and he told us not to move that he’d be right there. I hung up, turned around walked ten paces, and found him kissing Beth hello on the cheek. He had probably walked right passed me as we talked. It struck me that calling cell phones “mobile phones” made a heck of a lot more sense.
And so we made it safely to Gerard’s van, and for the next three days put ourselves completely in his care. For all of that we will be forever grateful.
Kevin
p.s. more later...I lost all of this material this morning after an hour and a half of composing...it was very hard to bear. We coped by going to the beach.
We made it. We had to wait, but we made it.
Our first delay began almost immediately in Portland after we had loaded all our bags onto the biggest cart we could find. I was already wondering how we were going to move this mountain on wheels through Charles de Gaulle aiport when the guy at the Delta counter looked at his computer screen and said, "Uh oh." Our flight was 40 minutes late due to a late arriving crew the night before. Our connection in Cincinatti was blown.
We spent the next 80 minutes cooling our heels while the agent worked the phones trying to juggling alternate flights and even running over to alternate carriers. I stood by ready to give a thumbs up to anything he might come up with while beth sent the kids up and down the escalators. We flirted with a route that featured three different connections including a one hour turnaround in Frankfurt. On top of that we would arrive in Paris only an hour or so before our train was due to depart for Bordeaux. It was that or come back the next day for the same flight as the one we were about to miss…and say goodbye to our train tickets. Impulsively I said yes but for the next twenty minutes as the agent was repeatedly put on hold a growing worry gnawed away at my gut. It all seemed very hasty, very contingent on things going smoothly...each time I turned around to find Beth and the kids I was confronted my our mountain of baggage. Finally I gave in to that inner voice and I told the agent to forget Frankfurt. We'd come back tomorrow. We’d have to eat the train tickets. Immediately I felt better and unless I was imagining things so did the agent.
The net result of all that was a very nice day in the park with Tanya, Ariel, Piper, and Jerry in southeast Portland, another night in a Portland hotel and back at the Delta ticket counter this time at 5:00 am the next morning. Not long after we arrived we were recognized by a Delta staffer who had tried to help us the day before. She made it a point to check in on us for the rest of the morning until we boarded…perhaps our first kind stranger of this trip.
Beth suggested we rent a portable DVD player along with “finding Nemo”. That turned out to be a great idea. Tess and Colm behaved as if we had taken them to the coolest playground ever. The airport, the plane, the dvd, the ipod, their books, all of it intrigued them to no end. They were great travelmates.
In Atlanta we used our meal vouchers from Delta to buy a very large pizza. We could have (probably should have) fed everyone in our area with it. Next to us was a family with three kids – a girl about the age of Tess with pink cowboy boots and a cheerleader skirt, an infant, and a boy about Colm’s age who asserted to all of us, “I can speak English and French.” Turns out he had a French and an American parent. I’m not sure exactly how Tess processed that boy’s proclamation but I couldn’t help but suspect that she might have taken it on some level as a kind of challenge. Beth and I can’t help wondering nearly all the time how this whole thing is going to unfold for our kids. Pretty soon we’re going to have a pretty good idea.
We boarded in Atlanta. I found myself sitting next to a 16 year old girl on her way to Cameroon to rejoin her mother. Her poise impressed me. Each time I see a youngster board a plane without an adult I both appreciate the care given to them by the crew and I think about what giant leap it is for them to make. This girl spoke French and English too. She’d been back and forth to Cameroon since she was six. She smirked at one of the stewardesses when I asked her in French about the customs form they had given all of us to fill out. I assumed, this being an international crew affiliated with Air France that stewardess spoke French but she stopped me and said very haltingly, “Parlez-vous anglais? Je parle un peu de Francais.” I paused and then said, “Oui.”
They pulled our plane away from the gate but then we just sat there for awhile. The girl began to fret. I asked if she was alright. She told that she only had an hour in Paris to make her connecting flight. I told her our story in an attempt to reassure that the airline would take care of her whatever might happen. I wasn’t working, I could tell. Then I asked her if her mother lived near the airport in Cameroon. She gave a look that was both polite and also managed to convey clearly to me that I had no idea what she was going to have to deal with. Then came an announcement that it had been determined that a starter valve in the engine would need to be replaced. They estimated about 40 minutes. No one would be allowed off the plane unless they wished to abort their flight. I could see the girl kind of curl up, close her eyes and try to shut out all that she had just heard.
It was close to an hour and a half when we finally took off. It was a long, long flight but uneventful. The kids slept a fair portion of the last half of it. Beth and I managed to sit together long enough to watch most of an episode of “Lost” on her Ipod. Once we debarked we would have to get our bags, hump them to the TGV ticket center, buy new tickets to Bordeaux (hoping that there was space available), and then call Gerard to arrange to be picked up at St. Jean train station and driven to our new home. The bags…they preyed on my mind, they were heavy and numerous – 2 huge rolling suitcases, another one a tad smaller, another duffle bag, a car seat, a guitar, two normal carry-ons with wheels, two backpack size bags, my briefcase with all of our documents, the laptop case, plus a small backpack for each of the kids.
But I need not have worried. We sailed through Charles de Gaulle airport without a hitch. Our bags were practically the first ones out of the carousel. We found two carts that rolled smooth as skates on ice and less than a half hour after touching down we were at the TGV station lining up for tickets. We had a couple of hours to kill so we went to an open air waiting area where the kids could run around and watch the trains arrive on the level just below them. Beth and I chatted in French with a nice old Filipino woman who was just returning from a family visit in the Phillipines. She complimented Beth on her French…I realize how sweet it is that the two of us will be able to function here in the language.
When the train arrives we are waiting and ready. It whooshes to a stop. We’ve already noticed how efficient the TGV operation is. It won’t be stopped for too long. Beth takes the kids onboard and I start making trips with bags into the intercar area where they can be stored. I see immediately that there won’t be enough room (nor enough time) to store them properly. Plus there is the problem of getting by people who both embarking and disembarking. I throw caution to the winds, I throw bags in the middle of the hallway, I run in and out of the train, alternately leaving bags behind me either on the quai or on the train, all the while nagged by the fear that the train is going to get underway before I’ve finished. By the time I’m finished, I’m really regretting the decision to wear my new brown sport coat.
For all the build up at home about riding on the “super fast train” I must say the experience was an anticlimax. Colm fell asleep soon after we were underway and didn’t awaken until we were nearly there. Tess too slept about half the trip. Beth and I were struggling with jet lag and that bone deep weariness that hurts and yet won’t let you sleep the way you need to. As we neared Bordeaux, four hours later, I began to anticipate one last baggage manouvre. I made a pile of bags in front of the door…about half of what we had. A couple of girls made a similar though slightly smaller pile (all of their stuff though) in front of the other door. Neither of us knew which side of the train we would debark from. It turned out to be mine. More frantic struggles, more “je m’excuse”s. Beth had to waken the kids and urge them out from the far end of the car. Finally we had everything out, the people slipped away, the train left and we were alone on the quai. Across the tracks, an impassable gulf, was the station. I looked around for carts but see none. I looked for an elevator, no dice. I looked for Gerard. Seemed like we had struck out. So I decided to go have a look. If Gerard was looking for us, Beth and the kids and the bags ought to attract his attention, in the meantime I needed to find a way to move those bags.
We finally found Gerard but without spending an hour trying to do so. I called his cell phone from a line near the ticket counters. He said he’d been there an hour. His van was parked out front. As I tried to tell him what part of the station we were in, he finally seemed to recognize the place and he told us not to move that he’d be right there. I hung up, turned around walked ten paces, and found him kissing Beth hello on the cheek. He had probably walked right passed me as we talked. It struck me that calling cell phones “mobile phones” made a heck of a lot more sense.
And so we made it safely to Gerard’s van, and for the next three days put ourselves completely in his care. For all of that we will be forever grateful.
Kevin
p.s. more later...I lost all of this material this morning after an hour and a half of composing...it was very hard to bear. We coped by going to the beach.
posted by K at 9:49 AM
4 Comments:
Wow Dad! I'ts true- every adventure is made up of smaller, yet no less exciting (sometimes frantic) adventures. I'm glad you all made it safely! Hugs all around~ Erin
Kevin, Beth, Colm, and Tess are in FRANCE. That is hard to come to grips with. Keep on posting your adventures, we love to read them.
Jer, Tan, Piper and Ariel
I felt ill when I read that you lost all of this material earlier in the day. Thank you for re-composing and posting for us! We've been checking the blog every day! It's so cool to read about your adventures, trials, experiences all. I like your writing.
Now the journey really begins. Glad to hear you safely made it to your new French home. Diane and I chuckled knowinly as the "bags and luggage" seemed to be the central theme of your post. We only had to keep track of her parents and their luggage but it can be daunting on the French train system. The pictures are great and your posts are like an episode of "You Are There."
Liz
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