Anderson South America Misadventure Day 31 – FLL to ATL to CVG “Homeward Bound” April 4, 2020

I wake up for some unknown reason and cannot get back to sleep. I am fretting again. I know that there is nothing that I can do about what is happening but I still cannot get back to sleep. I try all of my tricks and finally doze off. My cell phone rings at 5:35 am, it is a call from Berlin. Yeah, no, I am not talking to a reporter at this time and I still have my bite guard in. I hear Rob get up and go “Oh no.” This is not the way that anyone wants to start the day. I used to wake up to this and it usually meant that he had either lost a contact or had it off centered. Since his cataract surgery no more contacts and this is not the way that I get awakened. Our travel information has arrived. Victoria is correct about the bus and the flight to Atlanta. We do not have the 3:45 flight to Cincinnati, we have the 7:35 flight. Oh dear, how is Douglas going to get a car to us when we are going to land just before 9:00 pm? I look out the window. I can see the Rotterdam and two Coast Guard boats in the water between the two ships. What are they afraid of? Someone is going to make a swim for it? OK, get up get dressed and finish packing. We have a large amount of cords, and plugs and chargers, oh my! I gather them all up and cram them in my suitcase. I did not take time to bundle them up. We all know what happens to cords in a confined space if they are not bundles. They PARTAY! I will be untangling cords for most of our quarantine. At this point I really do not care. Other miscelanious stuff end up in the suitcase. I called down to Guest Services, after being on hold for 15 minutes I get a human being. I have one more infection in refrigeration in the Medical Center could they please have someone bring it up? She asks when I will be leaving, I tell her 9:30, OK, someone will bring it up before we go. Now I can just imagine Medical getting this call. Yesterday they moved 14 patients to hospitals. They have 40 people who are too sick to leave the ship but do not need to be hospitalized. And some yahoo wants her last injection brought to her? Yeah, that is right at the top of their list. I am sorting through papers, uh oh, I cannot find my “Clear to Debark” card. Well, they call it a card, it is really just a piece of paper, whatever it is, it is no longer in my passport. We start to sort through papers, lots and lots of papers. Rob finally finds it, what a relief. We pack up our computers and do one last check of drawers and closets. We have been in this cabin for 26 days. We had planned on 31 but that is still a long time to stash things and we want to make sure that we do not leave anything behind. Now I do not know where my face mask is. I have to wear this until we get home. I look in the mirror. Doh! I had it around my neck. Finally they call our group. Put on your mask, have your cruise card ready, get your carryons and proceed to the gangway on Deck 2 and to remember to “socially space.” Only use the forward elevator and stairs. We mask up and leave our state room. We have been in this cabin since March 7 and confined to the cabin since March 22. It seems both odd to leave and such a relief. We head down the hall to the gangway. They have three crew members handing out gloves. We are told to keep these on until the bus and keep them on until we get home. They are vinyl gloves and I know that they will make me sweat. They hand gloves to Rob. He tries to put them on. They do not have Rob size gloves. I ask the crew if they have larger gloves. I get that “are you kidding me lady?” look. Rob attempts to squeeze his hands in and drops all of his paperwork. Everyone stops and backs up to give him space to pick it up. You can tell that people want to help but these days everyone is afraid to touch anything. And we are off. We get down to the cruise terminal and we are aimed by different personnel, almost all wearing masks. It is odd when you see someone without a mask. We are told to go out to the sidewalk to wait, but “socially space.” There are buses there for us. I see a couple of ladies with whom we had eaten dinner. I tell them that it is nice to see them again and see that they are well. While we are waiting for our turn to board a man from the cruise terminal is handing out a small bag to each person waiting in line. He thanks us for being patient and understanding and he hopes that this helps. In the bag are a small bottle of water and a small bag of pretzels. I know that it is not much, but this means a lot to us. They are boarding just a few people at a time so that we do not get too close to each other. We head to the back of the bus and sit across from each other. They allow one more couple to come on and we are declared full. The bus driver comes on and stands in the front of the bus. He says: “On behalf of Holland America, Port Everglades and this bus company I am sorry for what has happened to you and how you were treated. I hope that your trip home is safe and uneventful. Thank you for choosing us for your travel.” We sit on the bus and wait. Then the bus moves, about 50 feet forward and we stop again. No one tells us anything, we just sit there. People start to get restless and we start to talk. The people ahead of us were going to fly from Atlanta to Amsterdam to Dublin. Wow, I thought that flying from Ft Lauderdale to Atlanta to Cincinnati was rough. We are hoping to make it in time to catch the 3:45 flight instead of the 7:35 flight. A man a few rows up says that he recognized my voice. Was I on the Today Show? Yes, that was me. He thanked me for what I said. I told him that he needed to thank our daughter Victoria, she was the one who knew how to use social media to keep this story in the news. We sit on the bus for an hour before we move again. Motorcycle police started to amass around the bus. They all have lights flashing, OK. We take off, we pause and the two buses from the Rotterdam join us and off we go. We have police leading us and along side of us. As we go they stop cross traffic. Wow, I have to wonder why they are doing this. Do they think that someone is going to jump out of the bus and make a break for it? We get to they airport. This is not the regular part of the airport. This is where they have the charter flights. There are four jets sitting there. They all say EASTERN on them. Rob wants to know how old these jets are. We sit and wait. Then people start to stand up. The bus driver tells them to sit back down. They are changing out the steps for the plane. Why, we do not know. The first one was not covered. Victoria told me that there was live streaming of people getting on the flight to Toronto. The new steps that they bring in is covered. Since it is not raining I figure that this is to keep us from being seen. I told Victoria that I will wave when I get on the plane. We wait and finally they start to take people off. Then we wait some more. We are now taken off in small groups. The first person that they check in is an older man. There appears to be a lot of confusion at the table. Finally he is sent to the plane. He has to walk up the steps with his suitcase. Instead of carrying his bag he is trying to roll it up the steps. People on the bus start to groan. Pick the damn suitcase up and carry it. OK, we are next. I am on the steps of the bus, but they tell me to wait. They are trying to space us. I have learned in this entire thing, do not move until someone tells you to move. Now it is my turn. I still have my “Clear to Debark” card. I hand that to the woman, no, she wants to see my passport. These people are dressed in hazmat suits. They must be getting warm. I can barely stand having the vinyl gloves on. They find my name on the master list. Rob is next to me and that person finds his name on the master list. They are already forming a line of people who’s names are not on the list. OK, our name is on the list, yay us. The two ladies at the table are trying to figure out which one should cross us off since they both have both of our names. I ask if we can board, yeah, fine, they keep arguing and we leave. I turn to wave to no one in particular just in case the cameras are on and Victoria can see us. We get up the steps and get on the plane. It is a 7 seat across plane, 2, 3, 2. The flight attendant told us to sit wherever we wanted. Oh, festival seating. He liked that. We head down the aisle and Rob chooses the first open row on a side. I point out that we should move down a couple rows, you know “social distance.” He starts down the aisle and keeps going. Um, this row looks good…. Oh, he has spotted an exit row. Smart man. We also have no one across the aisle for us, the flight attendants have a station there. They stop loading people and the plane is not too full. OK, this is fine, social distancing and all that. We are supposed to leave at noon. We got off of the ship at 9:30, got on the bus at 10:00 and got on the plane at 11:00. It is now 11:45. We sit and wait. Then the pilot makes an announcement. The previous flight had had a power outage and was unable to take off on time. They had to have the buses for this flight moved so that they could taxi the first flight. I shake my head. Rob sleeps through all of this. They start to load more people and more people and it is clear that we are not going to have social distancing on this flight. We have people behind and in front of us. Oh good, the lady behind Rob has quite a cough. It is getting later and we know that there is no way that we will make the early flight. We finally taxi and as we take off I say “Good bye Broward County, you suck.” The guy behind me laughs. None of us have very good feelings about Broward Co or Florida right now. We do not take off until 1:30 so yeah, we are not getting the early flight. As we are ascending they announce that the seat belt sign is on and everyone needs to remain seated. It is amazing but some people appear to have heard “it is time to get up to use the lavatory.” The flight attendants keeps telling them to sit back down and people keep heading for the bathroom. We finally level out and they start drink service. You are kidding. We all have masks on and have been told that we must keep the mask on until we get home. We get a snack bag of Fritos and some soda, and the soda comes with ICE. Yup, it is the little things. The woman behind us continues to cough. I turned around at one point. She has taken her mask off. Lovely. It is a short flight and we are on the ground in Atlanta. They tell us that we will be loaded onto buses and taken to the South Terminal. Rob knows that we are flying out of the North Terminal. Oh goody, I can just see the two of us dragging all of our luggage to another terminal. We get off of the plane and on the bus. This is one of those stand up airport shuttle buses. We are told to grab a pole or a strap. For weeks we had been told on the ship to not touch things, now we are told to hold on to something. We are driven and driven and I am beginning to wonder if they are driving us to Cincinnati. We pull up in front of the terminal. We are told that our luggage will be coming up on carousels 7 & 8. There on the sidewalk is a woman holding a sign for Delta Airlines. You have no idea how happy I am to see her. We get off of the bus and she tells us that if we are connecting to Delta we should claim our luggage then follow her. What a relief, we will not have to figure out what to do, someone will tell us. The luggage takes quite a while to come up. I keep reminding myself how long it took us to get there, they have to unload the luggage, put it on a cart, drive it to the terminal then unload it. We are standing around waiting and waiting. Of course there is always that one suitcase that spins around and no one claims. I head to the rest room and remove my gloves at this point. I figure that I had touched the strap on the shuttle bus and used the handle. These gloves are no longer clean and I have sweated enough that they are each about half pound by now. Our luggage is fairly distinctive so it shows up. It is in about the fourth load that comes out, but we get it. I do see another woman we ate dinner with, good, another person who I was worried about but they are OK. We are told to follow the man in the orange vest. There is a big section of people with luggage following the guy in the orange vest. They he passes us off to someone in plum holding a Delta sign. She tells us to walk to the next person in plum holding a sign and then we are directed to the Delta counter. There are not that many people in front of us, but I take this chance to take two things out of my carry on and put it in a checked bag. I have two containers that are bigger than 3 oz. We did not go through TSA screening to get on the charter flight but I will have to so that I can get on the connecting flight. OK, sort paperwork, let a couple people who have earlier flights go ahead of us and it is our turn. They have gotten more people working the desk, these people previously been human signposts. The woman looks at our flight information and our passports. Who made this reservation. Holland America did. Oh, they mixed up your passport numbers. I had Rob's he had mine. She has to do a lot of typing but now they are ready for our bags. Our big bag, it holds dirty clothes weighs in at 49 pounds. I tell you that a luggage scale is worth the investment. The next two are nowhere near the limit. Rob pays the luggage fee and she goes to print the luggage tags. I tell Rob that I will empty our water bottles while he is waiting. I do that and wait at the start of TSA Precheck. People keep trying to go in there but they do not have TSA Precheck on their ticket. I ask the guy if we are TSA Pre and he checks my ticket. Yes we are and I explain that I am wiating for my husband. I keep watching Rob at the Delta counter. Luckily he is wearing a raspberry polo shirt so I can easily see him. He is still standing there. What is taking so long. The line for the counter has really built up and I know that all of these people just want to get home. I finally go back to find out what the problem is. They cannot get the tags for our suitcases to print. Oh, OK, yeah, that is pretty important. We wait and wait. Finally I see the woman coming back with long strips of paper. Yup, luggage tags. She keeps apologizing for it taking so long. I assure her that if this is the worst thing that happens all day we will consider our selves blessed. I take the receipts and the stubs and we head for TSA. The woman at TSA Precheck is giving us our instructions. Take a gray bin, put everything in the gray bin then push the grey bin forward. I comply with my personal item, the water bottles my cell phone and anything else that I have loose. I then pick up my suitcase and start to put it on the belt. No, put EVERYTHING in a grey bin. OK, I’ve got it, I have learned do not deviate from instructions. I now get to the person who checks my boarding pass and passport. She looks at the picture and looks at me. She asks me to lower my mask so that she can see my face. THANK YOU, this is the first breath of fresh air that I have had since 9:30 this morning. Now we head for our terminal. Why is our terminal always the furthest away? We are heading for F. We board a train and ride and ride. We finally get there and head up the escalator to our gate. I want to turn the wrong way, no, for once we have the shorter distance to our gate. We get there and I plug in my very dead cell phone to charge it. Rob went off in search of water to fill our bottles and to ask at the information counter where we can get food. He comes back. The food court is in terminal E. OK, pack stuff up and get back on the train. We get there and find the food court. If I am not mistaken this is the busiest terminal in the country if not the world and it is dead. Three out of every four restaurant in the food court is closed. We find Qdoba. Yeah, Mexican sounds good. We get our food and I look for a table. There are plenty of tables but I want to space us as far from anyone else as I can. We sit down, take off our masks and eat. I know that we are not supposed to take our masks off. I had been putting pretzels and Cheetos under my mask before but there is no way that you can eat a burrito bowl with a mask on. We really did not have lunch and it is now 5:30, we are pretty hungry. Part way through dinner Rob gets a bloody nose. He tends to get these when the air is dry and he is in the middle of an injection series for his left eye that can cause bloody noses. I had grabbed lots of napkins and he is fine. We put our masks back on and head back to Terminal F. You know what? The medical center never got my last shot to me. Oh well, there is nothing that I can do now. We sit down to wait. I get a text from a limo service telling me that they will pick me up at 8:50 at CVG. Um, what? I ask a couple of questions and they really do not have answers. I text Victoria to ask her. She calls the Holland American travel help line. Yes, it is paid for by Holland America. She lets Douglas know that he is off the hook for getting a car to us tonight. It is time to board our flight. There are about 15 passengers on the entire flight. I asked if we could move back a row so that we could sit in the exit row. No, they have the passengers spread out to balance the flight. And one row makes all the difference? OK, follow directions and you will get home. I look at Rob. Oh, no, his nose started to bleed again and it has gone through his mask. He had stuffed some napkins in his pocket so he is trying to take care of it. A flight attendant comes by with trash so that he can throw the napkins away. She sees the mask and gives him another three masks “just in case and she did not want anyone to think that he had gotten in a fight.” She did ask if this was illness, no, it just happens. Another short flight and we land. When I was getting off a flight attendant asked me if this was home. I said yes. Then I ask her if she heard about the cruise ship that was not allowed to dock. Yes she had, yup, that was us. She said “oh you poor thing. I am glad that you are home now.” We have to walk up an incline to get to the terminal, at least it was not steps. Both Rob and I are winded by this walk. Yeah, no exercise for 12+ days and you looks your capacity. We head for luggage claim. Once again we are at the furthest terminal. There is only one train running at it is at the opposite end. Oh good, the moving walk way is turned off. We walk the entire distance. Rob goes ahead of me so that he can start to get the luggage. I am trudging along. I finally get up the escalator. There is a man holding a clip board with two signs on it. One is for another man and one is for “Andrea Anderson.” I had always wanted to see someone at the airport holding a sign with my name of it. I should have taken a picture. The other couple has a car parked there so they do not need the ride. They had gone on the 14 day cruise and it ended up being a 27 day cruise. He was wondering if he was going to have to take out a loan to pay for his parking. We get our luggage fast, that happens when there are only 15 people on a flight and we head for our limo. They load the luggage and off we go. We will be home tonight and sleep in our own bed. The ride goes fast and we are home. The driver helps us get our luggage out and we dump everything in the front hall. We check phone messages just so that we do not have to hear it beeping all night, find what we need for bed and happily climb in. From the time we left our cabin until we walk in the front door was 12 hours 20 minutes. It seemed as if we left the ship days ago.