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From here…
Our Milan-Newark flight was scheduled to leave at 10.40 am Friday a week ago. Even with the partial Italian train strike, we thought we’d have plenty of time at the airport — the plan was to take the first express train of the day (not hit by strikes) from Verona (where we’re staying) to Milan Central and another non-strike train to the airport (an hour out of town). Except we got a note from United Thursday evening saying they’d moved the flight up by 40 minutes, to 10 am.
This wasn’t good. We were already on the earliest Milan-bound train. But still do-able, just — we’d get to the United check-in counter 30 minutes before the flight was due to leave … yeah, we could do it, with a little hustling. Louisa goes on ahead, Barry follows schlepping the bags.
I huff and puff my way to United check-in — it’s a long way from the airport train station — to be greeted by news from my beloved: “No one’s here!” Shit! A huge United counter, empty as can be. No boarding pass machines. “Try United ticketing,” advises someone.
Same process, L runs, B follows on — nope, no United ticketing counter.
“Let’s go to the gate anyway,” she says. “But I haven’t got a boarding pass, not even an electronic one!” (She, wise as she is, has, despite the on-line statement that only paper passes would be accepted.) “Well, OK…”
I arrive at security, to find that she’s somehow sweet-talked her way to the head of the long line. And found an even sweeter security lady to explain our predicament to. “Where’s your boarding pass?” I explained I didn’t have one, there was no one at United, it’s now 15 minutes before the gate closes. All I have is an email on my iPad from United confirming my ticket. “Let me see.”
Next thing, this angel from on high is calling the gate, checking my name and … “Go on through.” (Eat that, TSA!)
At the gate, we’re the last ones. “You Evans?” “That’s me.” “Security said you were on your way. Here’s your boarding pass, hurry along please.”
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Over the Swiss alps.
And so it was, 10-hour flight, 1-hour immigration line (true) later, and easy rental car check-out, that we found ourselves creeping along, part of the Friday afternoon traffic jam heading up to and west along I-80, New Jersey. In a torrential downpour. We were en route to the Delaware Water Gap, near where Louisa’s family has been coming — to an Appalachian Mountain Club center with cabins — every two years since her dad turned 90. (He’s now 96 and still going strong.)
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To here.
So there we were, Mohican Outdoor Center, 25 of us, Friday evening thru Monday morning, yakking and drinking and hiking and swimming and having a fine time together. Did I mention yakking? Until it was time to head back — uneventfully — to Newark, endure the four-hour flight delay (comfortably, in a United Club), sleep (mostly) on the red-eye back to Milan, figure out the two trains to Verona and walk the mile-and-a-half back to our AirBnB apartment here. Temperature: 97F.
All good.