Wanderung 26

There is absolutely no feeling in the world quite like the sinking sensation you get when you face a ticket agent at the airport and she says, "These tickets are for April 14th, 2012, but this is May 14th, 2012! That was a month ago and these tickets have no value!" The only time that could come close to matching that feeling was the time we and our boys hustled out to Dulles Airport just in time for a flight across the country, only to be informed that our tickets were for a flight out of Washington National Airport (30 miles away) rather than Dulles Airport!

We had already bid Chris a sad "good-bye" at the curbside and he had long since driven off on his way back to Los Angeles, so we were well and truly in a pickle. But the United Airlines agent really was quite nice and called a long-distance number somewhere to find out how to give us at least partial credit for our long-since-expired tickets. In the end, we paid an extra $160 or so apiece to "update" our reservation to the 12:47 p.m. plane on May 14th. Very relieved, we checked our bags, processed through the security screening, had a soup in a bread bowl for lunch, and walked out to Gate 32 where our flight to Dulles was already boarding.

I managed to sleep through the first half of the flight and Monika had a good book to read, so the flight went well for us both. Just before we arrived at Dulles, we broke out the knobs of bread left over from our lunchtime bread bowls and had them for an evening snack. Monika had remembered to bring a patty of Vegemite she had purloined from the ship with us, so I spread that on my bread but thinly just as Ian had taught me. The Vegemite (a paste of brewer's yeast, I think) really gave the breat a lot of satisfying flavor. I had quite become a Vegemite fan and although I could not find it when we shopped the next day at our local Wegman's grocery store, they did stock Marmite, the British equivalent as far as I can tell, and I bought that for use at home.

We took a taxi home and I talked to the driver on the way. I was surprised to learn that the taxicab company forced each driver to purchase a new taxicab from a list of 10 approved cars every four years, and then repaint it to the correct color and equip it themselves. Each driver also had to pay for gasoline, maintenance and insurance, and thus they tried very hard to avoid accidents as they had to pay the increased premiums. On top of all that, the Dulles Flyer company charged each driver over $150 per day just for the privilege of being in their taxicab fleet; thus economic desperation pretty much ensured that the drivers would be on hand at Dulles airport whenever passengers needed transportation, even in the middle of the night. Our driver had chosen a Mercury Grand Marquis as his vehicle and was convinced it was the best type of car for the intensive driving he subjected it to: about 300,000 miles in four years!

In any event, he was a good driver and we were soon home. We were happy to see our house still standing, and even happier when we unlocked the door, turned on the water, and found everything was still working perfectly. I was so tired by that point that I just shoved our wheelies into the front room, crawled upstairs, and fell into bed for the night.