The troops flight home.

(This is an email from Cala we received after hearing that they all made it home after a hang up in Chicago's airport. We now know why...)

You know the first part that I was selected for the body cavity search at Heathrow. Mark and I were also selected for the extra baggage scan at customs, and then they had to search one of Mark's bags because of the can of haggis that we brought back. Then, Mark missed getting on the tram to the next terminal (don't ask me how, he was right behind me). Then at security, as I was once again selected for the body cavity search, but I had to go through it twice. At Chicago they had an escort come over and I think that his job was to stay with me during the entire process. Of course, because he works for the government, he didn't do his job. He handed me off to the person at the metal detector who handed me off to the woman who did my pat down, who told me not to touch my stuff until someone told me I could and then everyone disappeared. It must have been break time. So, I stood there waiting for around 5 minutes before we flagged a guy down to ask if I could take my stuff. He got really upset because we didn't know if anyone had looked at my bags and if they didn't know, I had to go through the entire process again. I told him do to what needed to be done, but to hurry up about it because at this point, I really thought we were going to miss the plane. I tried to find the woman who did my original pat down but couldn't. The guy handed me off to another woman to do another pat down. (Keep in mind how tired and irritated I am at this point). I told her that I didn't see the original woman anywhere, but that I did see a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. She said that they may look like they aren't doing anything, but they are. I told her that the only thing they are doing is standing around and talking and laughing and that I recognized 'nothing' when I saw it. She said, oh those are supervisors. I said well, maybe they should be supervising then and things like this wouldn't happen. She said if you have a problem with it take it up with them. I wanted to say, no I understand that government employees don't do anything and complaining isn't going to help, but at that point I thought I should just shut up. Needless to say, she made me go through every check possible and unpacked my entire carry-on. Anyway, so we run over to the gate and realize at that point that there are all kinds of cancellations and delays. They kept changing the time of our flight every 15 minutes or so and I was sure they were going to cancel it. I told you about the offer they had for people to volunteer to fly out the next day(editor's note: At Chicago they offered all 7 of them $250 in fligh vouchers, a night's stay in a hotel, and transportation back to the airport, to take a later flight, but Jed said he didn't want to b/c he wanted to get home to go camping with his family and not spend his birthday flying), but Jed didn't want to and I said that if everyone wasn't going to stay then no one was. So, we finally got in the plane around 6:30 and departed the gate at 7. We taxied toward the runway, but didn't get very far. The pilot comes on and says it is going to be around an hour because there are 75 planes waiting to take off. I promptly went to sleep. I woke up around an hour and a half later and thought the plane was going down. It was the worst turbulence I have ever felt. I guess the lady in front of Rob and Jess threw up and Jess almost did. Sarah slept through it all, and I only woke up for the last 5-10 minutes of it, which was apparently the worst. Jed said that he just kept thinking that he had killed Sarah because he was selfish about not wanting to travel on his birthday. At one point the plane did what Rob & Jed referred to as a death role. Rob said that we must have had a mig on our tail. They were both too funny. Anyway, we did make it home safely.

We were all so tired. On the way home Rob and Jed were singing, and Jed was doing the "this is the note" thing to Rob, so then Rob started doing it to Jed, and Jed said "I'll match any note you put out there because I was in show choir in high school". Rob said "was your husband in show choir too?" It was hysterical!!!!!!


(as we sat at Jessie and John's kitchen table in Scotland reading this email, we almost all wet our pants so thought I'd share. Thanks for making our day, Cala, and hope you have recovered from this traumatic, albeit hilarious, encounter with the TSA.)