For those of you who don't know, we as a family have embarked on our latest adventure - a 6 month stint in the USA.
I will be assisting Lars in building our business there and so opted to bring the family with instead of flying backwards and forwards.
Packing up our place for the trip was a feat in the impossible as we made the decision and flew 2 and a half weeks later. If we did not let you know, we were not being rude or secretive - we just had a tight schedule and spent almost every available minute packing. We burnt both ends of the candle and managed to get ready to leave on time.....or so we thought.
Our first cause for potential distress occurred when we arrived at Johannesburg International. Our departure time was 00:20 (early in the morning). We arrived to book in and were told that we were supposed to book in the previous evening as our flight had left in the early hours of the morning - in essence we were a day late. Fortunately for us, the flight was not very full and even though it was a budget fare, we were not charged for the required changes and were able to book on the flight we had arrived for.
Jhb to Amsterdam was fairly routine. We had a layover of 4 hours at Schipol Airport in Holland.
New York was another affair. we had 1 and a half hours to clear customs, collect baggage, change terminals, book in for our final leg and get on board. By this time we were all ratty and a couple of harsh words were exchanged. The upside, we received a priority customs pass which meant we were fast tracked to the front of the customs queue and did not have to wait an hour to clear customs.
After we collected all our bags, upon exiting terminal 4, an African American helped us get from terminal 4 to terminal 1 and took us straight were we needed to be (which I recon saved us a critical 10 minutes). Because our itinerary was now a day late, we had a small glitch getting onto the domestic flight to Salt Lake City and were once again given priority status and taken right to the front of the queue to clear security - another 20 minute saving I reckon.
We just made the flight and were seated in the very back row of a completely full flight.
That last 4 and a half hours was torture. Rogan was running a mild temperature and eventually fell into a fitful sleep. He awoke as we landed and the reunion with Bev and Fred who were waiting for us at baggage collections was pleasant.
The fun part for me was Tracey asking if both Bev and Fred would have come in separate cars for us to get all of us and our baggage home. We just managed to get all our baggage into Rob Picolo's bakkie. Well Fred has a Dodge Cummings 2500 Diesel Turbo Truck - Which comfortably house all 7 of us in the cabin and our 10 bags plus 5 carry on's in the bin.
We arrived to some cold weather, which will likely persist for another month or two before summer gets here.
I fly to Dallas on Tuesday to join Lars to grow the business from there while Tracey will stay here in Utah with Bev and Fred in their basement (our new home for the next couple of months).
We will update as and when there is more news.
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