February 23, 2024
If everything goes right there is no story to tell. It is just another flight, another trip
through the airport. We left Madison
this morning and we already have an interesting story and the best part was that it had a good ending. Thursday, when Thom checked in for us, he put our TSA pre-check
numbers in and I printed our boarding passes for our flights to LaGuardia and
then on to Arlington, Virginia on the hotel printer. We neither one had TSA Pre-check on our
tickets even though he had entered our numbers, but that has happened before. Otherwise, everything
looked fine and we each had a ticket. However,
when we received out our flight information from the Peace Corps, Thom got the
e-mail for my ticket and I got the e-mail for his ticket. We forwarded the tickets to each other and
assumed that they had just mixed up the e-mail addresses.
We were picked up at the airport by Paul Reichel at 4:30am. Paul
is a member of a Saturday morning running group that Thom has been a part of. He was also a former Peace Corps Volunteer
and a Peace Corps Staffer. We arrived at
the airport an hour ahead (which is typically more than enough time) for Dane County Airport, but found
the lines longer than normal. We were
still fine when we got to the security point ID check and the gates are not
far, so even with the longer than normal lines, we had no concerns about making
our flight.
When we finally got to the ID check point, the TSA agent
checked my ID and my ticket and then said “that’s strange”. She looked at Thom and asked if we were
flying together and we said “Yes”. She
then scanned his ID. My ticket had
Thom’s ID information and his ticket had mine.
We had to go back down to the ticketing agent and get the tickets
corrected. When we got back to the
ticket counter, the ticket agent was not sure if we would make the flight as we
would then have to go back through the security check. Fortunately, she was able to get our Pre-TSA
to work on our new tickets and the security line would be faster there. Once I had
my ticket, I hurried to TSA-Pre and as I arrived, I heard our names paged for our
flight. Thom was still with the agent
and she called to the gate.
Our gate was right by the exit from pre-check, but Thom
needed to have an additional scan because of the hip replacement. The gate agent told me that they would not
wait long for him and asked me if I still wanted to get on the plane. I said “yes” and on I went. But I took my time walking down the
jetway. The good news is that we both
made it on the plane. We have learned that we should not assume. We should have checked when we received each
other’s ticket to make sure they were no other errors. Becky, our country desk agent, will make sure
there is no problem with our tickets to Kosovo.
The rest of our day went smoothly, although our landing at LaGuardia was interesting. We were coming in for a landing we were just
to the landing strip with landing gear down and ready to land, when the plane
pulled up and started back into the air.
After getting back into the landing pattern and starting a new
loop around the airport, the pilot got on to explain what happened. There was another plane moving off the runway
and although the pilot thought it would be fine, in an abundance of safety,
they decided to pull up and try again.
We had our first meeting with our group last night. We are a group of 9, which is a small
group. We have a split between 5 females’ and 4 males; and I think five in the English education sector and 4 in
Community Development. There are quite a few
that graduated in 2021 from various universities, worked for a few years and
wanted something different. One of the
young ladies taught for 3 years before joining.
They are very interesting and quite amazing.
We joined a small group at the High Line for a beer and game
of Cards Against Humanity. If you haven’t
played it, it is the more adult version of Apples to Apples. We will be in training sessions from 8:30 am
to 4:30 pm on Saturday and then it is off to Kosovo Sunday evening.
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