Flying Home, September 3 2007

Time to go home, this time we would stop over at JFK for 3.5 hours. After a long flight from Gatwick to JFK, we can't believe how many people were packed in the immirgration. We were glad we have 3 hours to do this, well at least the line was moving. After about an hour wait, we passed the immigration. We were told to pick up our luggage to go thru custom check. It was an even smaller area with everbody now with a few luggages to themselves, and the ridiculous thing is they only have 2 custom officials checking all these arrivals! People were very impatient cause most people have a connecting flight to go and the line was barly moving! And people were yelling at each other cause some people tried to cut in line. We waited at least 1.5 hour to clear, then of course we were too lucky to be pulled out for a more detailed check, so the luggage had to go thru the scanner. But nothing we bought is illegal anyway. So we passed, as soon as we got out of Custom, we can't believe we had to go thru Delta's baggage's re-checkin. And there was line too, and the line again was not moving. The Delta people were blaming secutiry causing the delay. But the atmosphere there were just tense cause people can't believe how inefficient they were to transfer poeple out, we were all supposed have our baggage checked to the final destination and went thru security check at departure! Anyway Delta eventually realized they were making a lot of people angry, so they simply take the luggages and let people go. But then we still had to go thru the check by Homeland security. Geez, after all is done, we had less then 20 minutes to get to the gate! So we ran to our gate, the waiting area was mostly empty when we got there, so we went into boarding gate directly. When we entered the gate, we found all the travelers were crammed in this big airport shuttle that connects to the gate. Not long after we entered, the shuttle moved toward an airplane which was not taxied in the terminal, then we were "imprisoned" in that shuttle for about 20 minutes with no air-conditioning because the airplane is not ready yet! So the flight was delayed for about 40 minutes, finally we took off.

When we got to SeaTac, it was raining and cold, then on our drive home, a big thunderstorm just came down real hard. 20 minutes later at around midnight, we were back to our home. kids took a hot shower, and I can see they are happy to be back to the comfortable home. It's a wonderful trip, but it is very tired even for me too. As I closed my eyes in my warm bed, some scenes in the last couple weeks flashed back, and I said: until next time..