Pitstop in Chicago

7/16/07
Well the flight wasn’t as bad as we thought.  We did manage to watch the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy on my IPAQ as well as some of the on-board movies including “Blades of Glory” which was good for a laugh.  We were certainly luckier than the poor couple behind us - she was six foot or more and rather large and the guy was at least 6’8” so he must have been miserable.  We tried not to kick our chairs back much.

The flight attendant who comped us the drinks came back to chat a bit (that is when she told us how much better she liked working in Coach, whispering about her clientele up front…) She had told us that if you arrive too early, there are no customs agents but we made it at about 4:50am just in time for customs to come rolling in.

We deplaned and went through immigration, picked up our bags and rechecked them and wondered what to do.  We had made tentative plans with Cathy and Robb to meet them at the airport for brunch but it was only 5:30am or so.  We tried calling, eventually realizing that I had the wrong number and finally got a hold of Cathy who said it would be fine if we came to their house instead as long as we didn’t mind.  They had just started redoing their kitchen way back on our way out when we invaded them for a couple days so we wanted to see the end result (plus Cindy finds it hard to stay away from Morgan, Bailey and Mclain her cute little nieces - you can see why…)

We took the L and tried to not fall asleep lest we wake up in points unknown and Cathy met us in the turbo-mom MiniVan complete with furniture tied on the roof at the subway stop.

  We went back to the house where we found out that 1) the kitchen is done and gorgeous 2) Robb shaved his head (no pics, sorry) 3) the building next door has been demolished and would provide a perfect spot for us to take pictures of the girls in their cute little Indian clothes we bought them in Delhi (we figured the rubble made it look more authentic!).  We hung out for a few hours and had our first good coffee and bagels in months and caught up with what’s going on in Chi-town.  After far to short a period, we had to climb back in the mommy-mobile and go to O’Hare for our last journey home, a four hour, non-eventful flight.

When we got there, I had a voice mail from some kid who said he had my bag.  They apparently sent ours from Chicago on an earlier flight and he had the identical bag.

  As we came down the escalator towards baggage claim, we saw both of our bags there and were pleasantly surprised that we wouldn’t have to wait the thirty minutes that it always seems to take at John Wayne Airport (yeah that is really what it is called!).  We grabbed our bags and then I stepped back inside to try and call the kid and see what happened and if he found his bag.  As I was leaving voicemail, I looked over and there was my mom looking around for us in baggage - what a coincidence.  She ended up driving us back home where she and Brenda hung out with us hearing a bit about the trip.  Well that’s it all in all about thirty hours of door to door travel from Darshan and Murli’s home to ours.  After we recuperate, we will write one final entry if we can think of any words of wisdom.  In the meantime, if any of you are hiring “mature looking” enterprise software presales people in the near future, let me know! We are running out of rupees!