England # -1: In which we leave for England!!!! … in The England Chronicles - September 2024

…then come right back home again.

Now that we are kind of back to normal in Post Helene world, it’s time to start making !!!England Entries!!! Cleanup seems to have gone very well here, although lots of roads still have big hunks missing and there are trees down all over the place. Classes are back in session at the college and there was even a home football game yesterday. So we’re also back to horrific traffic and crowds and noise, yippie! My family in Asheville has power, water and internet again although it’s only been a week since they got water - power was a few days earlier. It will be a very very very long time till everything is cleaned up there.

Back to the fun stuff! Well, not so much with this entry. This entry was NOT fun stuff. On the plus side, we got our travel disaster out of the way first thing this time! 

SO. Departure Day was Saturday, August 31. We were flying out of Charlotte at 6:45 pm and arriving in London at 7:30 am. Then we planned to hop in our rental car and zoom up to the Lake District!! Maybe. That was Plan A. Plan B was to get a motel somewhere along the way. Kim had booked her timeshare for us outside Penrith, which at best is a 4 1/2 drive from Heathrow. (It’s crazily hard to book anything with that timeshare in England, very very few options, hence the Lake District in September - that was pretty much the only choice.) Considering we had an overnight flight and I hadn’t driven in England in 7 years, having a Plan B seemed like a good idea. I was all set up to get as much sleep as possible with a window seat, sound cancelling earbuds, my white noise app, and Advil PM, but I definitely did not want to be driving to the Lake District if I still felt sleep deprived upon landing. It is M-roads all the way (the equivalent of the interstate in the US) so not a difficult drive but still. Didn’t want to forget which side of the road I was supposed to be on and die on our first day in England!

Baker B took me to Morganton to meet Kim, who was coming from Asheville so it’s a convenient centrally located switch off point. (Baker B is dying to go to the Lake District but wants to go when the weather is more likely to be good - May or June - so we’re already making plans for 2026!) (also he had to stay home and take care of our poor Phillip who managed to hurt his foot/paw and could barely walk. Spoiler alert - he’s fine but it took several weeks before he could walk properly again. We think he hooked a claw on something and twisted his leg trying to get loose.)

I wanted to be at the airport very VERY early since they are doing a blue fuckton of construction at Charlotte and I kept hearing horror stories of people missing their flights despite being there at the prescribed time. Mark and I got to Morganton quite early, Kim was not very late, and we made it to the airport with all sorts of time to spare. We got checked in and through security surprisingly quickly. Since we were going for two weeks we each had a checked bag and a carry on. They offered to check Kim’s carry on for free - she had paid extra for more legroom because she injured her knee right before our last trip, and still has a lot of issues with her leg swelling, and I think checking two bags was part of that extra fee. As was earlier boarding and free drinks! Which sadly she did not get to take advantage of. 

We were so excited!! In the airport, all checked in, no problems, very early, time for dinner and a beer and to relax and enjoy being on our way!!

We went to a bar and grill near our gate and ordered some (ridiculously expensive) food and a couple of (ridiculously expensive) local brewery pints. I got a flatbread margarita pizza with drizzles of balsamic vinegar. I took two bites, and my phone dinged with a text. 

Our.Flight.Was.Cancelled.

OMG

“We are working to reschedule you!” the text said.

I am not a frequent flier, and have only had one flight cancelled. That was a connecting flight on a trip from Philadelphia to Charlotte, and I got the notice right before I boarded the first flight. They said they were working to reschedule me, and by the time the first flight landed my second flight was rescheduled. There wasn’t even a delay. So my initial thought was, oh, it will be fine!

My second thought was “maybe I better go find the assistance desk!”

I left Kim at the restaurant (I’d booked the flights so everything was in my name/on my credit card) and rushed off to the assistance desk, which was quite a hike away. By the time I got there the line was very very very long. 

I don’t think I mentioned this was Labor Day weekend. I did not realize it was Labor Day weekend when we booked the flights. I didn’t realize it was Labor Day weekend till maybe the week before, when I was reading something about the massive airport crowds expected on Labor Day weekend, and thought, “I’m so glad we’re not flying on Labor Day weeke….OH SHIT”

Also, Heathrow was experiencing Labor Force strikes. This was affecting workers at the Customs gates. Pretty sure that was a huge factor. The waitress at the restaurant told Kim there had been a bunch of flights to London cancelled recently. 

I stood in the assistance line. And stood in the assistance line. And stood in the assistance line. I stood in the assistance line for HOURS.  I kept trying to rebook with the text link, but couldn’t rebook. When I heard the women in front of me were calling the help line, I called the help line too. Yes, I should have done that first thing, but again - not a frequent flier so didn’t know to start there. But it was no help. Our flight had been straight through, and they tried routing us to Dulles and JFK and O’Hare and god knows where else, to no avail. Finally I got close enough to the assistance desk to give up on the help line. And to call Kim, who had been waiting patiently at the restaurant, since we needed to both be there if we were going to rebook. 

The assistance line took FOUR HOURS. Then it took ANOTHER HOUR when we finally reached the desk and that employee tried to rebook us. At least we could lean on the desk! The extremely nice and extremely traumatized woman working the desk also tried and tried and tried to rebook us to no avail. Well, we could have gotten rebooked on a flight three days later. Which would have cut a huge hunk of our two week trip right out. We did some calculations and decided the only reasonable option would be pushing our trip up a week. And yes, we were SO FORTUNATE to be able to do that. Both of us could work it out with our jobs. And the assist woman was able to get us on the same flight the following Saturday. 

The next step - which, if we’d know what the fuck we were doing, would have been a MUCH earlier step involving one of us staying in the assistance line and one of us running down to the baggage area - was getting our checked luggage back. We had to go down to the luggage retrieval area, put in a request to retrieve our bags… and wait. And wait and wait and wait and wait. Why were all the bags that were meant to be put on a plane to London not in one spot and easily retrievable??? Who the fuck knows!!! My suitcase was brought out pretty quickly. Which was nice, as I could sit on it. While we waited three more hours. One of Kim’s two bags got retrieved probably an hour after mine. Her second one took until at least 11:30 even though she kept asking people at the counter to check the status. Nobody could figure out the status. She had an AirTag so could see it was back there. Finally one girl took pity on her and went back herself and brought it out. And I will say right now that nearly every employee we talked to was SO nice, and helpful, and apologetic and they all were trying really hard. As they faced hordes of angry, upset, weeping flightless luggageless customers.  

We got the shuttle back to long term parking at around midnight. I’d managed to get ahold of Baker B earlier - no small feat as he never has his phone where he can hear it, and also expected us to be halfway to England at that point and certainly not calling him from the Charlotte airport. I was afraid Kim would have to drive me home and we’d be showing up at my house at three in the morning and give him a heart attack. He met us again in Morganton at something like 2 AM, and toted me home. Where I immediately spent god knows how long trying to cancel the car reservation for Sunday morning and book one for the next week. 

To be continued! As we rearrange plans and book new lodgings and weep in frustration and decide to just put the trip off but happily do NOT go with that exhaustion/frustration/despair born idea.