Doha to Adelaide

Having finally got to the Oryx Hotel in the airport after last evening's debacle, we sleep late and transfer to the lounge shortly after noon.

CJ enjoys a selection of dishes from the Asian buffet and his lounge favorite: Laksha soup. Carol orders a sushi selection from the menu.

After lunch, we transfer to the quiet room adjacent to the business center for our five hour wait. As airport waits go, this is as good as it gets.

The flight is under 13 hours. The food is good. Carol actually uses the bathroom which we did not expect.

Not knowing how much luggage we have, Bronwyn and Neil retrieve us from the airport in the Tesla and Lexus. We catch up over a bottle of bubbly.

Carol decides to try for the second floor (first in AU or FR). She climbs them on her bum (butt in the US). She spends her first night home in her own bed.

We are allowed to bring in 3 bottles of alcohol per person. We have a total of 9. We have two bottles of personalized bottles of Don Julio tequila. These are the anejo. We left the personalized bottles of blanco at Pam's home.

We tasted with Yves Gras at Domaine Santa Duc years ago and purchased his wines forever. We found this at a restaurant in Brest and its divine even if being made by his son now. The Domaine Brusset comes from the same village. We taste with Laurent Brusset the same day and have a long history with his wines. Beaucastel is our all-time favorite Chateauneuf du Pape.

Epilogue - France/USA 2024

France/USA 2024 was a trip in four parts. The first quarter was sublime. Valerie's wine and cheese tasting with France's famous cheese monger in Paris was sublime. Two weeks with Didier and Jocelyne cannot be described. It was like visiting a brother and his children. It simply could not get any better.

The second quarter was meant to be a relaxing week in Florida with Pam and a short return to our old neighborhood to reconnect with friends. Our first night in the US Carol suffered a fall, fractured her pelvis and our world turned upside down. 

The relaxing week by the pool became a time in hospital and then a parade of physical therapists. The third quarter reconnecting with mom's friends in Atlanta, visiting the US Air Force Museum in Dayton and the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit and enjoying sometime with CJ's cousin got wiped out. The spectacular cruise down the Snake and Columbia Rivers didn't happen. Thankfully, Lindblad allowed us to transfer our booking and Carol's brother found a deserving US veteran amputee to enjoy in our place.

We're back in Adelaide. Carol survived the long trip home, with a night in Doha. She is progressing well. The fracture appears healed and now she suffers only from back pains resulting from too much inactivity and sitting. 

Even with the setbacks, the Brittany part of the trip makes for a wholly successful venture into the Northern Hemisphere.

Satellite Beach to Doha

We will make the return journey in two parts. Everyone agrees, two, long, back-to-back flights would likely set back Carol's progress. We will stop over at the Doha airport hotel for two nights. 

Do you believe in omens? CJ uncharacteristically makes a premature exit from the motorway. Although instantly corrected, we pray it's not an omen of the entire journey.

We have changed our flight to Doha from a Seattle departure to an Atlanta departure. Our Delta flight to Atlanta is delayed three hours. We exercise Carol during the delay.

Delta delivers us from Orlando to Miami where we're met by rookie wheelchair driver Jimmy. It is a good thing WE know this airport. Jimmy passes by the place we must descend to catch the train and only realizes it when CJ questions where he's going. He does it again looking for the elevators. 

From that point we lead him until he loads us into a taxi for the ride to the International Terminal.

The International Terminal is a disaster. CJ calls for wheelchair assist from the curb and is told none are available. Since our Delta departure was more than two hours late, we're running late. CJ finds a wheelchair and a luggage car and is soon pushing both through a crowded airport. Fortunately, we know where the Qatar check-in is located.

They do not leave the wheelchair with Carol in the lounge. CJ makes do with a chair with wheels.

The flight staff are marvelous. After surprisingly disappointing food on the outbound legs, CJ's osso Bucco and polenta are excellent.

Carol sleeps through most of the flight to Doha which is a very good thing. CJ gets six or seven good hours of sleep, maybe more.

We pass over Poland and to CJ's surprise, a city of Tichy in Slovakia shows up on the screen. This is where both his paternal grandparents are from.

The plane continues crossing Turkey and making its way to Doha across Iraq. This route is becoming more uncomfortable with Iran and Israel facing off.

14 Days

We had never intended to spend 14 days with Pam and Randy. The days are peppered with visits by the PT's and OT's and a virtual appointment with an excellent doctor. By the end of the 14 days, she has made remarkable progress and is cleared to fly and return home.

She has two PTs with Joe the most excellent. He has her negotiate the two steps into and out of Pam's home and on his last day with her, gets her into and out of our rental car. She shocks all of us with the ease she manages it. She also wrong foots her first attempt at steps. According to Joe, the wrong footing should cause extreme pain. An indication of her healing progress is that she has none when she does it.

As a reward for her hard work, we schedule a 'field trip' on our last Saturday. Her brother Bill has driven from central Florida and her sister who lives near also joins.

Not Qatar Finest Day

After a very good flight from Atlanta to Doha, we have a horrible airport experience where things go from bad to worse and into the Theater of the Absurd.

Our airport experience is usually sublime. The green jacketed brigade typically make the move from the plane to the lounge a most pleasant experience. 

With Carol's injury, we need a layover in Doha to allow Carol time to exercise and move about. To make it easier on her, CJ books the Onyx Transit Hotel in the airport for two nights. That causes everything to go wrong and wronger.

It seems that local security rules dictate that one can only be in the airport in Doha for less than 24 hours. No where during the hotel booking process did it say that.

We are offered a range of absurd possible solutions and at one point CJ blows a fuze yet manages not to get arrested.

After 3 and half hours sitting in the wheelchair waiting area, he changes strategy. He chases down a manager and tells him a story. It is the story of a woman who has travelled in business class with Qatar 24 times and gets injured 3000 miles from her departure destination in Seattle. He tells of the change in flights and the horrible return option which was not described that dumps us in the closed Melbourne airport and midnight and that woman customer stuck in a wheelchair, at best, for six hours. He tells of making a hotel reservation for two evenings without any warning that it was illegal under the airport's security regulations. And he tells of now sitting in the airport for coming on four hours and being offered nothing but an absurd range of solutions and asks the manager a simple question. What did we as customers do wrong to deserve such abuse? ...and 25 times business class customers nonetheless!

He suggests that at this point the airline should figure out a way to fly us to Adelaide on the direct flight on ANY day in the next week they have two open seats AND that they figure out a way to get the two of us to bed in our hotel.

Within 15 minutes we are rebooked to Adelaide on the direct flight and working our way through a convoluted process to the hotel. It seems that since they have screwed us over for so long, it is now coming up on half past eight having arrived at 5pm. In a few minutes, if we leave and arrive back in the airport for tomorrow's 8:45 flight, we will be under the 24-hour rule.

Thanks only to the marvelous and extremely nice and competent two green jacketed wheelchair drivers, who do not believe the malarky they are feeding us related to our checked luggage, the four of us visit the baggage area and discover our bags unattended with no direction to anyone to transfer them to our flight. The fellows collect the baggage and are now pushing two wheelchairs, five pieces of carryon luggage, and two very heavy pieces of checked baggage. CJ is in a wheelchair also since his recurring groin problem has worsened with all the airport walking he was doing.

Alcohol is not allowed into Qatar. To complete this absurd evolution, we must exit the airport (for a few MINUTES), and check back into tomorrow's flight. Immigration make us purchase an Qatar entry visa for those few minutes. One of our drivers informs customs that we have nine bottles of alcohol but that the bags were never intended to enter Qatar, are only entering Qatar because we have been unwittingly caught in their 24-hour hell, and that the drivers promise the alcohol will be on its way out of Qatar in MINUTES. Sanity prevails at customs and we are soon on our way. 

The luggage gets checked. We clear immigration, again! At security our house key causes CJ's backpack to get checked. This is the second time the house key and its aircraft carrier key chain have been misidentified as a knife.

Arriving at the hotel, there is a long wait as the staff makes several fruitless phone calls to ASSURE, we have not entered the airport within 24 hours of our 8:45 departure. For all the trouble it causes, what is the purpose of this insanity?

None of this should have taken three and a half hours. We could have been taken to the lounge for four hours, rested and eaten. They could have retrieved us then, did all the things we needed to do to comply with the 24-hour rule and we would have avoided the anxiety and mistreatment. Actually, at one point they had proposed the solution but it was when we still had the 2am flight to Melbourne. That proposal was that we would have remained in the lounge until 2am, when we would have been required to enter and exit the airport. And since our tickets were in two day's time, we would have been required to wake at 2am the next day and do the exit/enter charade a second time! Go figure what sense this all makes.

CJ's Time at Pam's

We had intended to perform a thorough inventory of our 5x10 storage shed. It was a two- person task. CJ spends a couple of hours at the shed, gets depressed, and does some critical shopping. He returns with only the Mathew Hayden cricket bat shadow box.

With Carol focused on physical therapy, CJ is shopping for her medical supplies, picking up prescriptions, running errands, and solving the puzzle of packing for the return trip.

Randy has been preparing breakfast most mornings. CJ decides to make huevos rancheros as his contribution.

In the end two boxes will be shipped to Australia. One of them is offloading weight and volume.

For the trip, we have two checked very heavy bags. The weight comes from nine bottles of wine and spirits. Additionally, we have five carry-on items: CJ's backpack, Carol's purse, CJ's CPAP, small roller suitcase, and Carol's walker. We normally carry three or four items. Remembering we have five will be challenging.

CJ is fortunate to have Randy as a beer sampling buddy, their amazing pool for a refreshing afternoon dip, and the two of them when the effort becomes too much, and he runs out of energy before Carol wishes to be put to bed.

Real Food & Family

Carol is discharged from the hospital very late, and CJ drives to Pam's in the dark late on Tuesday, October 15. It's a good thing he's made the drive many times. Getting her into the car required the assistance of a good Samaritan resembling a retired linebacker. It took everything Pam, Randy and CJ had to get Carol from the car to the house and into bed.

Her first morning is fantastic. She does well in the walker although we realize a need for a wheelchair. A good night's sleep and a good breakfast appears to have done wonders.

By the end of the second day, we realize Carol motors about on the walker quite well in the mornings but fades as her energy wains as the day progresses. Nonetheless, she is making progress which exceeds our expectations.

The hospital has turned her care over to an excellent organization. She is visited by a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and has an virtual appointment with doctor.