The Heathrow Quickie, or The Dropping of the Shorts

 I know I said I wasn't probably going to be posting again until Monday, but felt I should at least pop in a Quickie to tell you all about my flight back from Greece.

From Athens to London's Heathrow, it was a nice, quiet 4 hour flight during which I napped.

At Heathrow?  That's where the fun began. 

I should have hand an inkling when I went through customs.  It was a slog.  Very long.  Overly detailed, from any other time that I've flown.  After putting everything into the tray, including my sneakers, to be scanned, I was told that I needed to remove my belt.  I warned them, "my cargo shorts are going to fall down," and they didn't seem to care.  So, off came the belt, and when I stepped into the scanner and lifted my hands up, my cargo shorts went down and everyone got to see my blue boxers.  As I was putting my belt back on, and being the smartass I am, I couldn't help but ask the security guard "aren't you glad everything was in it's proper place?"

 Fifteen minutes into my scheduled 3 hour wait, British Airways announced that my flight was going to be delayed for 3 hours, so now I had a 6 hour wait.  Shit.  There was a technical issue.  Talking to the Scottish co-pilot, He told me, "they knew about the issue, but thought it would be fixed in time."  Well, it wasn't. An hour and fifteen minutes later, they announced that we were going to be moved to another terminal where we could board another plane to Philadelphia.  But there was a catch, the new planed needed to be cleaned, and the catering, as well as our luggage needed to be loaded.  That delay was only going to cost us 2 hours.  So, rather than leave at my scheduled time of 1340, my plane taxied down the runway at 1640.

On the plus side for some, we had an open bar for most of the flight back to the states.  That was, no doubt, to ease the aggravation of all those who missed connecting flights, and there were many.  I had a glass of merlot, and while it wasn't excruciatingly bad, it was still bad.

Philly was so much better.  I only had to wait 5 minutes for my suitcase, and when I got to customs, while everyone else was waiting in a long line, I was walked through the line for air crews, so, basically, all I had to do was hand the agent my passport to be scanned.  I have no idea why I was given special treatment, but it was nice.

When I got to my gate, I had a 15 minute wait before boarding my plane, and instead of a 60 minute flight, we landed in Harrisburg 36 minutes later.  Don't ask me why it was so short, but I did thank the captain as I deplaned.

Tomorrow, I will begin talking about Greece, and how I had such an awesome experience.  Until then, here's Teddy Swims.