So my next journey has begun. It was extremely hard leaving my husband and my doggies yesterday. It has been many years since we have been apart for a long period of time; so needless to say I don’t predict this to be an easy 10 months. My counterpart DB and I arrived at PHL Airport yesterday with way too much luggage and were under the impression that we would be paying for some excess baggage or some “extremely” overweight baggage. That wasn’t the case. Thanks to US Airways Express and a lovely employee of such…. We had a very pleasant experience with very little snaffoos. The first bump in our journey was the fault of the US Government and their government travel personnel. Mr. Jon booked my flight but failed to attach my orders which would pay for my flight. So after a 30 minute phone conversation with a man who wanted me to refresh his memory on who I was and when I came into his office…(really if you couldn’t get my reservations right what makes me thing your memory serves you to remember who I am).. any way finally got my ticket.
DB and I arrived at the designated gate which the US Airways rep and our tickets indicated. Had a snack and was chatting away. We went through security at 1120 and our flight should have started boarding at 1150. We continued to chatter on when I looked up and saw the destination under gate F24 to be “COLUMBUS, OH”. I automatically turned to the gentleman beside me and asked “Sir, where are you headed to?” He says “Columbus, OH”. I turned to DB with wide eyes of panic…he looked panicked too! It was 1210 and our flight departs at 1220. Watch out PHL airport folks because we ran to the gate they so nicely change our flight to in the nick of time.
We arrived safely to Nashville, TN.. only to miss the shuttle back to Fort Campbell. Next one is at 1700. Lots of people watching happened for the next 4 hours.. I love people watching. Had a young girl sit next to me.. 13 years old and the daughter of a strange military couple PCSing. She was telling me all about her morbidly obese cat who is 17 lbs and who sits at the dinner table with her family and eats what the family is eating. She goes on to tell me that her dad feeds the cat bacon and eggs where her and her sister eat Hot Pockets. “The cats eat better than we do!” Having been around kids… I hope she was embellishing the story a little but not sure….
Finally met up with my girl and all the other guys and gals about to endure this journey and it seems like we may have a good crew… time will tell. Wearing ACU’s (my uniform) for the first time in a few months and finally back on a real military installation. Finally the real Army again, I will be relieved when I get back to a really Army post with disciplined soldiers not Reserve soldiers who walk and talk on their cellphones, pull their uniforms out of the bottom of a duffle bag and think they are okay to wear and even the morbidly obese soldier who hasn’t taken a PT test in 10 years and refused to go up a uniform size. NO offense to the squared away Reservist but when I get around the “ate up like a soup sandwich” ones you make my skin itch and anxiety attack here I come……
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