To Ecuador.. pt 2. Of course, that’s when things started to - TopicsExpress



          

To Ecuador.. pt 2. Of course, that’s when things started to go sideways. Following morning I went down, collected the bags from hotel storage and hit the lineup to check-in (Business Class, so la-dee-da) only to find out Dallas Fort Worth (hereinafter DFW) wasn’t accepting Canadians today. Something about Polar Vortexes and sub-zero temperatures making landings impossible (no high-end de-icing facilities in DFW.. wonder why?). After a good hour of searches, best our hostess could come up with was a (the same) flight later in the day (hope things clear up) and push the rest of the travel itinerary back by a full 24 hr, allowing us to shoehorn in an overnight stay in lovely (frozen) DFW .. lucky us. Instead of an 8:40am flight, we simply took the same plane 5 hours later at 1:40pm (well.. not like it was going anywhere in between, right). Then there was our ordeal in US Customs in Vancouver. First, apparently TSA isn’t thorough enough, cause they re-xrayed our bags. My customs declaration (1 per family) declared the existence of agricultural products (Melody’s seeds.. no way I’m letting them find’em undeclared… that can get nasty). So while one group of US customs agents bumped Melody’s ID problem (can’t check passport picture vs face with goggles on and nowhere without fluorescents to go take’em off) up at LEAST 3 levels that I saw, another started rooting through our checked bags for the aforementioned seeds. Of course, our original plan had been to check the bags directly through DFW, in which case they’d have not cared about the seeds, but since we were now going to have our bags back into our possession (not by choice), they were contraband *sigh*. Upshot of it was that they found the packaged seeds, all of which were ‘Made in the USA’ and tho regulations would have had them confiscate anyway since they had left the US and were returning, they apparently combined that info, the un-opened packages, and the fact that original itinerary would have had us NOT accessing them in the US and allowed them to pass. Classic red herring: they never did find the OTHER seeds from Melody’s heritage tomatoes and such. They didn’t ask if it was all of them, and we weren’t volunteering anything. Score! On the other fork, someone finally decided to check Melody’s passport picture vs what they COULD see of her face plus her BCID and allowed as how it might be her and let us pass. Got in to DFW around dark. Had a bit of a panic about the bags (too long a stayover to check them straight through) and finally decided to simply abandon them and hope the airport would still have them in the morning. Good decision, as it happens; just getting the 3 of us (Melody and I and the dog) and the 4 carryons onto the shuttle was enough of a pain. In fact, we almost missed the shuttle, they said it could take 50min to arrive due to road conditions; in fact, it was under 20… luckily someone (flight staff?) who knew we were waiting for it noticed it pull up and threw me a heads-up. BTW, I might not mention it again, but we kept running into the same people more than once.. check-in agents, flight staff, other passengers.. happened in at least 2 airports. DFW was colder than Nanaimo (the term ‘witch’s tit’ comes to mind) with a nasty wind and many of the non-highway roads were simply a sheet of ice. Highway was reasonably clear tho.. apparently even DFW has sand and salt mixes. Hotel stay was not too bad, but other than that, I’d give DFW a pass. Walked the dog around the hotel evening and morning.. not fun with no real winter clothes. Also walked over to Denny’s to pick up dinner. They got Melody’s order wrong, so now she figures Texans class fries as ‘dippable veggies’. In the Denny’s, I met a group of 3 young black folk from LA in DFW for an actuarial conference for a week. Also ratted on a couple of kids playing ‘push all the elevator buttons and run’ to their mom, who promptly brought them to me to make them apologize. At the time, I was awaiting Melody’s replacement dinner pickup of Chicken Florentine in the hotel restaurant (I made a bad substitution at Denny’s when they were out of pot roast). Following morning we shuttled (shuffled?) back to the DFW airport, where they had indeed found and sequestered our bags (yay) and we were able to proceed to the ritual rape known as security. Texas is not good with the disabled. Evidently we ‘were selected by our carrier for additional security, so we both got patted down and I got tested for residues (explosive? drug? they didn’t say). Even more fun than in Nanaimo. Not as bad as Vancouver. Take what you can get, I guess. .. and out of the US, hopefully forever… .. to be continued further
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 02:10:31 +0000

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