Rota, Andalusia, Spain
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The word last night was that the flight would have a show time of noon. I awoke at 7 and went over to the terminal. I said hello to some fellow travelers in the same predicament and was told that there is good news and bad news. The bad news was that the flight was bumped back to midnight. I had work to do and figured that we could keep busy. I walked away and it dawned on me that I didn't get the good news. I asked and was told… "At least there is a plane." Another flight was manifesting to
Rota Spain but it only had 19 seats. We had no seniority so we wished good luck to the friends we had met along the way. Then while Susan and I had our laptops out and stuff strewn about, one of the counter guys came rushing in to the USO room and asked if anyone else wanted to go to
Rota, Spain on the flight that was manifesting. We signed up and waived rights to the midnight flight. We furiously packed our stuff and I noticed 2 of our fellow passengers walk in the door with their luggage. I was going to ask them if they heard about this flight… then it had dawned on me that our car was still in the short-term parking lot
. You are not supposed to leave the terminal after being manifested. What a dilemma. Leave the car in the short term lot and risk being towed or quickly drive to the long term lot and run the mile back before they noticed that I was gone. I ran to the car and made it to the long term lot as fast as legally possible. Uh, well that’s not true. I may have exceeded the limit a bit. I locked the car and sprinted back towards the terminal. I was winded but pushed it. I started to walk and catch my breath as I neared the terminal but I heard my name being paged.
So I am writing this while we are in flight to
Rota, Spain. We are on a KC-135 in flight re-fueler. Basically it is a flying gas tank. The crew members can lower a boom to jets that fly close to the rear. We are on canvas seats along the walls of the plane. The center of the bay holds 4 very large crates. One of them has our luggage. Below us is the gas tank. People are standing up using the crates for a table; others are using it as a foot rest. Susan is reading, Kathryn and Travis have their electronic games out. We are a couple hours into an 8 hour flight.
The plan is to grab some lodging on base and get a rental car. We want to drive down to
Gibraltar. We hear that Spain holds some land in Morocco and there is a ferry you can take across. That would be an excellent way to visit the African Continent. We may drive into
Lisbon and then return the car, then bus to Barcelona. From there we will take a train ride to
Paris. We will probably stay in the southern countries of Italy and Greece on this trip.
Comments
Sounds like a great time to me - take lots of pictures and enjoy :)
At least you finally made it out of the country. So Jealous. I have never been to Spain. You guys will have an amazing time. Keep posting.