The Plane Ride Home (Saturday/Sunday)

We thought the train trip from Changsha to Nanchang was bad…and it was, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the plane ride home. We boarded the plane on time for its scheduled 1:00pm departure. After sitting at the gate for an hour or so, we taxied out and got in line for takeoff. Then it started raining. Hard rain. And lightning. After about an hour the announcement was made that we would be returning to the gate to refuel and wait for clearance to leave. Then we sat at the gate. And sat. And sat. And sat. It rained harder and thundered more. The plane got hot, almost unbearably hot. And we sat some more. We knew we had a four and a half hour layover in New York before our connecting flight to Norfolk, so we hoped we’d leave soon. No dice. Three more hours. To make things worse, Jerri was already dealing with a cold and I started coughing, sneezing, and having a runny nose while waiting on the plane. We figure we probably picked something up while on the train from Changsha.

Flooding in Beijing on July 21/22.

We finally left the gate at 6:00pm, five hours late. Once we taxied out to the runway it started raining again and we saw some more lightning. We hoped we’d get out in the break before it got too bad. Fortunately, we did end up taking off and the ascent was pretty rough. Only later did we find out it was the beginning of the worst storm in 60 years for Beijing. Major flooding killed 37 people. 500 flights were cancelled and over 80,000 people were stranded. It kind of put our five hour delay in perspective.

On a positive note, I was fortunate enough to end up sitting next to a Chinese high school student who was part of a group of students headed to the U.S. to look at universities and stay with host families in several cities to find out about life in America. She said they’d be staying in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco before returning to China. She was very pleasant and made sure when announcements were made in Chinese only that she translated them for me.

Our flight from JFK to Norfolk was due to depart at 7:00pm Saturday. It’s a twelve and a half hour flight from Beijing to New York. We left Beijing at about 6:00pm Saturday (Beijing Time), which meant that the earliest we’d be in New York was 6:30pm Saturday (Eastern Time). We circled JFK for a while and didn’t actually land until nearly 7:00, which means by the time we got our luggage and checked in at the transfer counter we missed our connecting flight, and the next one wasn’t due to leave JFK until 8:35am Sunday. So we stayed in Jamaica (New York) for the night and caught a flight the next morning. Fifty minutes in the air. Left on time and landed early. What a pleasant change. Hardly time to get settled in compared to our other flights over the last two weeks.

Amy and Andrew met us at the airport, welcome signs in hand. Boy, are we glad to be home.