May 9, 2010, Kiss my Volcanic Ash

More fun on Euroski 2010: after deciding to try to fly home early, since I could not even pick up my skis with the latest viral flu, I arrived at the Milan airport around 730AM for my 1100 flight to Atlanta, only to learn that the airport was closing to all traffic at 8AM. Well, Chouinard is right: it is not an adventure until something goes wrong. Crowd watching was superb this day, lotsa folks trying to get control of the situation, calculating whether they should take a train to Rome where the airport was still open, try to fly to Atlanta whenever the plane arrived from Rome where it had been diverted, while their JFK plane never made it to Italy today, new rumors every half hour or so.

Finally it seemed likely that the airport would begin flying again at 1400PM, our flight would arrive then from Rome (with passengers from Atlanta who had been sitting in the plane on the Rome runway for five hours!) So we were scheduled out at 3PM only four hours late, and with a nice full flight, accomodating a hundred or so travelers who chose to join us instead of taking a chance on the next flight to JFK, whenever that might be or not be.

The extra hours waiting made several new friends, and got me a full story on the Shroud, several Delta employees had taken free passes over to check it out. Our flight path took us right over the middle of Iceland, great view of our friend Mr. V. Of course we arrived in Atlanta long after the last flight to Seattle for the day, so one more night of airport bivvy time. Great story for anyone who will listen, "how I survived the ash cloud of 2010."

Well at least you only got delayed a few hours and then a day. My wife and I did the Haute Route back in April and got stuck in Geneve for an extra 5 days. Geneva isn't a cheap place to be stuck. Can't believe that thing is still causing problems. We actually met a few folks from Iceland while on the route and wondered how they faired in getting home.