I'm In Norway!!! (Finally ...)

After:

Deciding that I was too sick to go Norway and mourning about it ...

Then deciding to go anyway, after Gary and my two best friends said that I would kick myself if I didn't go, knowing that was entirely true ...

Staying up half the night trying to pack with a wooly, fuzzy brain (sometimes happens when I am sick - I have a hard time making decisions and planning)

Hauling myself out of bed Saturday morning wondering what the heck I was doing ...

Sitting in the Houston airport still wondering what I was doing - but excited and knowing I had made the right decision. Tried to find my "Airport Zen" and just sat around ...

and Waited ... And Waited ... And Waited ...

Arriving in Newark, walking the half mile to our departing gate. Soooo proud of myself!  I was having problems in Houston and a cart stopped by us and Gary made me get on it ... I got on and someone else got on also so Gary had walked a ways ahead of us.  I was seated backwards and as I passed him I told him that it made me feel old ...

Then settling in for our 3 1/2 hour lay over in Newark. Sat down and AGAIN tried to find Nirvana - but really just sat there people watching ...

And Waiting ... And Waiting ... And Waiting ...

Now to board the plane! Got situated, putting all the stuff I would need to get to in a small bag since with at least Continental planes - in the space in front of you to store your baggage - in the aisle one (my seat of choice ...) there is a metal box blocking a lot of it and my backpack usually cannot fit. Sat down - fastened my seatbelt as my two travelling companions had arrived ...

And began to ...

Wait ... And To Wait ... And To Wait ...

Then, the Captain came on and told us the problem: in highly technical terms he said that the plane was "broken" and that the maintenance personnel were working on it even as he was making the announcement. He had no estimation for how long it was going to take ... he said maybe five minutes?

So we

Waited ... And we Waited ... And we Waited ...


Next, hearing the Captain come BACK on the PA system and tell us we all had to exit the aircraft since the repair was going to take hours. He gave us a new gate number to go to.  So we all packed back up what we had taken out to get settled in for the long haul - and off the plane we went. Seemed sort of like a progressive dinner that had gone horribly wrong somehow ...

Walking BACK to exactly where we came in from our Houston flight to wait for the plane to arrive from London, be cleared off and cleaned. And the ...

Waiting ... Waiting ... Waiting ...

began. Only the chairs had changed shape and size and we had more legroom, everything else seemed the same ... (OK, and no 'chemical toilet smell')

We were all in the same boat - and we huddled together in one corner - even though due to the lateness of the hour, all four gates had tons of empty seats. I started to notice something. Some of us seemed oh! so much more lucky than others!  The unluckiest of all fell into two camps, as I saw it - probably equally as unlucky and distributed pretty evenly between the two.

There was:

"Camp Scream "

This was where the parents were uselessly trying to quiet their wee little, tired, crying ones. The parents all seemed to have the same look: equal parts exhaustion, frustration, desperation and rage. But the little ones?  Oh! No! There was a choir of yells and cries and screams. Sounding as different as circles, squares and triangles are different.

Some tired sounding cries.

Some hungry sounding cries.

And some desperate sounding cries.

And one little guy?  

He was LIVID!

And had a lovely set of lungs on him too!

Between the looks on the parents faces and the children's cries - they pretty much summed up what we all were feeling ... us? just not so much.

the other camp was:

"Camp Drowsy"

This camp was rather quiet! These parents all seemed to have the same look too: equal parts exhaustion, frustration, desperation and more desperation as they tried every trick in the book to keep those little tykes awake in the hopes that they (and thus: themselves) would sleep longer on the actual flight still ahead of them ...

for a while we enjoyed conversing with members of our own camp:

"Camp Luckier" of course, Gary fell into *Camp LuckiEST* but we made him an honorary membership based on having a spouse in the group ...  

A sort of camaraderie developed - probably by being all stuck in the same predicament with nary a dang thing we could do but ... wait. So ...

We waited ... And Talked ... And Waited some more ...

till we all seemed to run out of subjects to talk about and ended up silent again, waiting in our own little worlds as the cacophony of cries continued to swirl all around us ...

And then -

We boarded again!

Got situated again - put together my stuff-it-under-the-seat bag and broke the zipper.


Joy!!!


And, of course ...


More


Waiting ... And Waiting ... And Waiting ...


Finally!

Hearing the Captain start speaking!  Until he began to explain that we were unfortunately delayed, NOW, on THIS plane.  A catering worker, while restocking the food in the back, broke the handle off the door!  We were currently waiting for the part to be delivered and then it would need to be installed ...

And so began the ...


Waiting ... And The Waiting ... and The Waiting ...


Some more.

Next, we heard the Captain come on the PA System and tell us that, while the door was just minutes from being fixed, there was going to be another delay due to a passenger getting ill on the flight and being taken off.  That in and of itself wasn't so bad - didn't take long at all ...

Waiting while they HAULED OUT THE SOILED SEAT he had been sitting in - in a ginormous sealed bio-hazard bag (them all suited up ... and me wondering if we were all now fated for a horrible, gruesome death ...)

AND

Waiting while they installed a new seat!


NOW THAT


took some time.


THEN AND ONLY THEN did they tell us that it was going to be yet MORE time since they had to go in and take his bags off the flight - a VERY STANDARD PROCEDURE FOR ALL AIRLINES and they acted as if they had just started the process once the new seat was in place.  Even I - and by this time my brain was waaaaay beyond fuzzy - knew that they would have to get his bags off the minute the Captain told us he had been taken off the plane. Why they didn't start then? Or why did they decide to word it as if they were just starting right at the moment he made the announcement totally eludes me ...

Because, you know, we needed SOMETHING ELSE TO BE FRUSTRATED ABOUT ...

Then the

Waiting ... And The Waiting ... And The Waiting ...

while

"The Hunt for the Greatest, Sneakiest, Most Elusive Bag of All Time"

began!

Apparently, it seemed, with only one man up for the job: the clever 98 pound wonder:

Karl from the "Mail Room"!!!

Apparently every spare baggage handler was needed for the OTHER competition being held (coincidentally) at the same time.

A competition called

"Keeps On Ticking" - a favorite among airline employees and well attended.

Competitors take 20 pieces of luggage each (ahhh, so THATS where all those little luggage trains were at the time...) and in Phase 1 tosses them off the top of the eighth floor parking structure.

They are judged on "beauty of the bag", "arc and fall", "most original attached identification doohickey", "number of items heard breaking" and "most changed" (before and after shots provided).

The points for Phase 1 are recorded and Phase 2 begins:

They all have a set amount of time to rush all the bags back to the aircraft identified on the luggage tag ... or, alternatively: any aircraft within 100 yards of the "Target" aircraft and no points would be deducted from the contenders final score.  They could use two alternates to help during this phase (alternates MUST have their airline employee bona fides or they WILL be disqualified ... its all in the rule book). Anything further away than 100 yards ... give or take, or having a luggage tag missing and points are deducted.  Phase 3 (the final phase) begins right after the end of the shift.  

They meet (location to be texted to select team leaders no sooner than 30 minutes before the beginning bell is rung) and here the scores are totaled, appropriate awards given (mostly soft, unbreakable items from luggage that splits open (no points gained or lost on this type of toss, but since most awards come from these little treasure troves - yearly dues have been greatly reduced).  

Party commences immediately after awards ceremony.

Always included but NOT LIMITED TO:

1) Large quantities of alcohol consumption from the "Duty Free" bags that *finger quote* fall off *finger quote* the carts.

2) A fashion show of clothing also from the treasure trove bags - with

3) Accompanying auction of said items, personal grooming supplies, and other miscellaneous items.  

Monies from the auction funds the next parties food items.  But I am off topic- google the rule book - I don't make this stuff up ...


Seriously ...


Well over an hour later, the luggage is found!


Things move quickly after that and soon we are flying the friendly skies! Unfortunately listening to the Captain and crew apologize way too many times that they are sorry for the fact that we departed FIVE AND ONE HALF HOURS late got tiresome.  I mean, really, what is done is done - lets move on or I am going to get so mad I have an aneurysm burst in my head.

Fast forward through the next seven mind numbing, painful hours - cause I am pretty sure I have exceeded my bitching quota for the week ... BIG TIME (maybe nexts weeks too)!

After all that ...


Suddenly ...


With hardly any warning at all ...


We land in the middle of a lovely, beautiful, breath taking forest of snow covered pines!  
(Gardermoen airport is a ways outside of Oslo)


We were in Norway!

We were in Norway!

We were in Norway!


After slip sliding our way to the rental car parking lot (walking through dirty, slushy, icy road & sidewalk snow sludge in Crocs is QUITE the experience - let me tell you ...), we loaded up the tiniest car you ever did see (poor Gary) and slip slided out of the airport parking lot - after accosting random strangers and asking them how the hell do you get out of the lot? Apparently the car rental lady forgot to give us a couple of VERY CRUCIAL steps on that subject.

And  on our way to Oslo and to our hotel!  We were 100% confident that the GPS system that we rented with the car would whisk us quickly away to our hotel and bliss ...  My, my how quickly we forget ... bless our naive little souls!

Finding out that the GPS system was CRAP came in pieces as our 100% estimation dropped basically exponentially by the kilometer with the coup de grâce coming when she repeated "Exit ahead" about three times in a row without telling us:

a) a name for the exit (odd, since all the exits have a unique name)

Or

b) where to exit - as in how far up the freaking road?

And since we were entering the complicated tunnel system underneath downtown (with NUMEROUS uniquely named, and spaced apart exits) she promptly fell asleep!

Alas, she does not seem to work in tunnels which sucks big time since downtown Oslo is a tangle of tunnels full of exits, merges and splits ...

Found ourselves above ground once again and recognized some familiar landmarks and got ourselves oriented just as nice Norwegian lady yawned herself to an awake (sort of) stupor and semi-consciously sort of navigated us to a place kinda close to the hotel.

We have decided that in addition to her "Tunnel Narcolepsy", she is "Directionally Challenged" which seems to be a pretty bad personality flaw if you are trying to navigate someone to a hotel ... someone apparently did not read her resume all that closely ....

Arrived at the hotel! In spite of our Navigationally Challenged buddy ...

Checked in, schlepped our bags to our room which happens to be the cutest teensy weensy little Radisson hotel room you have ever seen!

I remember this now - the twin single beds, European sized rooms ... I had forgotten.

So, folks - door step to door step?  Well, more accurately: back door to collapsing onto a soft, clean, down covered, fluffy single bed?  Twenty three hours ...

And in honor of the twenty four hour mark (not really, I was just here doing the math and it somehow just worked out that way ...) I snapped this photo:

It was exactly Four O'Clock in the afternoon!  Gotta love Norway in the winter!!!


Happy to be here!


Really!


I just would like to take my set of Vengeful Travel gods and ...


well ...



we won't go into that,



or issues like the state of my health - it will be all for the best if I end this now ...



Ha Det Bra!