My trip to Nebraska began at Prescott at 11am shuttle to
Phoenix. Bill thought I was being
excessive in leaving 4 hours before the plane left, but you are required to be
at the airport 2 hours before the plane leaves so that you can go through the
rigmarole of the TSA requirements. What
a pain that has turned out to be but we like cattle submit to the impersonal
and sometimes demeaning processes these TSA people put us through. Sometimes I think they have some sort of
superiority complex that requires them to use their power to make everyone
cower before them. I guess some people
have to get their jollies somehow and at the expense of the traveling public
seems to be the ticket. They terrorize
little children by wanting to tear their favorite teddy bear open in an attempt
to prove that the little kid is trying to smuggle drugs on board inside their
very much loved and presently very raggedy bear. It has its eyes and fur loved off and foot
chewed beyond recognition. They also
round up frail old ladies in wheel chairs and frisk them for drugs or bombs
while allowing fully robed and cloaked Muslim people through without so much as
a ‘wanding’. They don’t want to be
accused of profiling!
Well, I got there at 1pm after a harrowing trip down in the
bus. Well it was not so harrowing as
usual because Shirley, a fellow quilter from my guild in Prescott, sat beside
me and we chatted the whole way to Phoenix.
The harrowing part is the craziness of traveling on I-17. The big rigs scare me as they careen down the
mountain side and they do not always stay in their assigned lanes etc.etc.etc.
When I got there I found the check in desk and the workers
were harried beyond belief. The tornado
that had ripped through Oklahoma on Monday and made matchsticks out of the houses
there, was now causing problems big time in the skies over the central part of
the USA. Many flights had been grounded
elsewhere and never made it to Phoenix to pick up people to take them elsewhere
and flights out of Phoenix had been grounded due to bad weather systems between
the West and the East of the country. My
plane never made it out of Texas to pick me up and take me to Nebraska and so
the workers had to find another plane headed for Nebraska so that I could get
there. As luck would have it, they found
the last seat on US Air – a direct flight even- from Phoenix to Omaha but it
left at 7pm instead of the 3pm that I was originally set to leave. So that meant that I would not arrive at 9pm
Nebraska time but rather at 11.30pm and Jacob picked me up and we drove to
Lincoln arriving around 1.15pm. In the
luggage claim area, two ladies were fighting and screaming at each other due to
the fact that one was perceived as
pushing herself ahead of the other to get out of the plane. As it was, most of the people on the plane
had been traveling most of the day, were re-routed from original flights to
this one, and worse yet, were hungry and very tired. Personally I was glad to be on the ground at
last. We did have a good and un-eventful
flight from Phoenix and best yet, it was a straight through flight and no plane
changing in Colorado. I am not a fan of
changing planes anywhere so that I can get to Nebraska.
In the morning the kids came in to get me up but I was
already awake. Sara and Jacob are now in
their new home and the area is very unfamiliar to me so I had to have written
directions to get the kids to school and to pick them up in the afternoon and
to go get Sara from work. Only got lost
a couple of times but have enough knowledge of Lincoln to be able to find the
correct roads to get everyone picked up and in their right places.
I have been here almost 2 weeks and it has been a
whirlwind. We have had some terrible
storms and some tornadic activity just south of us but aimed right at Lincoln
in its path of destruction. We dodged
the bullet Jacob bought a radio that
warns of tornado activity and it really makes a racket and will waken the dead,
as my mother would describe it.
Through My Heritage.com site ,I have been able to make some
headway with my Australian genealogy information. One man is connected with my Uncle George and
has Gatfield information. I hope to get
information from him to be able to send to Edgar and Christine because I do not
think they have their genealogy done or even have interest in it, but they need
to know where they are connected.
Sara has a couple of weeks yet before her baby
is born and tomorrow, Monday 3rd June, she has a doctor’s
appointment. I am anxious for this baby
to be here, but she is more interested in having the baby come – that is
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