African transport right here at home

It was a bit of a nightmare, but I finally made it back to Virginia. As much as I complained during my two years in Africa about transportation, I'm not sure the U.S. has a much better grasp of how things should work. For instance, why is it that two round-trip plane tickets are less expensive than the shorter and more fuel efficient circuit route? Why can't we just pay a set rate based on the miles we cover, allowing for holiday and seasonal differences? And how is it fair that two people on the same flight in the same class can pay vastly different prices? I'm sure there's some reasonable answer as to why the airlines can't function like Greyhound, and it probably has to do with maximizing profits.

I left Reno bright and early Monday to fly back to San Jose. The five-hour layover gave me plenty of time to collect my suitcases from baggage claim, drag them onto a bus for a ride to another terminal, and check them into the new airline. In fact, I had another 4 1/2 hours to kill after that. My first flight took me to Minneapolis, where thunderstorms kept us from landing. We circled for 45 minutes on our fully loaded airplane before we had to divert to Deluth to refuel. I may not be able to blame Northwest for the rain storm, but I can certainly chastise them for overbooking our flight to the point where they didn't have enough gas to circle a little longer like all the other airlines seemed to do. If only I had taken the free round-trip ticket when they announced in San Jose that they were overbooked!

Two hours late, we finally got back to Minneapolis and landed. Like many others, I had missed the last connecting flight for the evening. After Africa, you'd think I would be used to the incivility of people shoving themselves in front of me to get served first, but on the contrary, I find manners to be more important than ever. Consequently, I ended up dead last in line.

Because the delay was considered an "act of god", the most Northwest would do was to rebook our flight, give us $50 off our next roundtrip ticket, and offer hotel "discounts" by calling an 800 number. We weren't allowed to have our luggae back,m since it was booked through our destination. One of the ladies in front of me called and found a hotel nearby for a mere $100 a night. I still think of that in terms of "3 weeks salary". I was going to opt for a comfy chair by the gate for the evening, but another woman offered to share a room with me. $50 for a bed and a shower with no change of underwear. It wasn't worth it, but I agreed anyway.

The woman I stayed with turned out to be slightly crazy, but not in a bad way. She was just visibly shaken by having her plans go astray and couldn't seem to recover. "Where will we eat? Where will we sleep? How do we find the hotel? I don't know Minneapolis at all." She couldn't appreciate the adventure in it at all. Plus when I told her about my Peace Corps experience, she looked at me as if I were the crazy one!

My new flight from Minneapolis was no longer direct. Instead, I had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Detroit. Finally, 30 hours after I left Reno, I arrived in Norfolk. One of my suitcases did not. This didn't really surprise me. The fact that Northwest's computer system was down and that they couldn't electronically track the bag was of more interest. I put my faith in the system, and another 30 hours later, my suitcase arrived.

It's ironic that all my flights through Africa and Asia went so smoothly. I had to wait until I returned to the U.S. for things to go truly wrong.