Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 04:17:43 -0700 (PDT) From: "Alek O. Komarnitsky" Subject: Addendum to 6th Alek & Wendy African Safari Email: Still Heading Home! ;-) I sent the last Email at 0600MST Monday (1400 Local) from the Wilderness Safari Office in Jo'Burg, SA. The good news is that we did NOT miss our SAA flight this time and we are in Miami with an ETA of 1400MST (32 hours later!) back at our house in Colorado - long trip! We have an hour & half to go before our next flight (missed the earlier flight to DFW->DEN by about 10 minutes - darn!) so here's some misc. rambling from Alek after lots of miles and little sleep. We were/are flying business class (70,000 miles for a coach ticket; 80,000 for business ... duhhh!!!!) and one very nice benefit has been access to the airport lounges. Since we didn't have time to eat lunch in Jo'Burg, we simply grabbed a few sandwiches from the deli tray at the SAA lounge. Alek snarfed one with his fingers (instead of using the tongs) which resulted in a withering look/comment from another business class partron; he probably wondered why they let riff-raff like me in there! ;-) BTW, Wendy (and my mother) rightfully so have been trying to cure me of my bad habits for years! While waiting to board, we noticed the two ladies behind us had the same Natural Habitat Adventures luggage tags as we did - turns out they were on a trip Wendy had put together for her company. We boarded the 747-400 ... it was SAA's first one named "Durban" named after the city and coincidentally was flown by my father on its delivery flight from Boeing/Seattle to South Africa in 1991. On the outbound leg, we were in seats 30HJ ... on the return, we were in seats 30AC ... so the surroundings looked familiar! ;-) As we settled into our seats, guess who plopped into 29A right in front of us ... yes, the sandwich guy! He did look relieved that because he was in front of us, the meal service would come to him before me! The 2 hour domestic leg from Jo'Burg to Cape Town was uneventful except for some strong headwinds (bad sign for the international leg). Several dozen people boarded at Cape Town ... one guy was kinda funny because he had a coach ticket and tried to sit in First. The cabin crew gave him the boot ... so then he tried to sit in Business ... and then they gave him the boot there too! Sandwich guy started to get up and see if they would do the same with me, but the doors closed and we were off. Wendy and I play cards for a while and then ate dinner ... sandwich guy smirks as he takes the last meat entre ... so we have to choose between goose and fish ... neither of which were all that good. Plus the 8-9 movie selections are pretty lousy ... Wendy switches halfway through hers and Alek watches a bad Jamie Lee Curtis flick called "Virus" which means it was REALLY bad. I guess we'll just need to fly in 1st class next time! ;-) ;-) ;-) So after all that, I check my watch ... still 12 hours of flight time to go ... ouch!!! Wendy says nite-nite and out she goes. Alek finally doozes off and is up after what feels like a long nap ... I check my watch ... 10 hours to go ... ohhhh boy!!!! 2 hours before landing they serve breakfast. sandwich guy cracks a devilish grin as the flight attendant hands him the last omlette in front of us. Little does he know that I have outsmarted him ... since I had talked to the flight attendant beforehand and he then pulls out the two stashed away for us! ;-) Sandwich guy looks ill ... he doesn't finish his omlette and remains huddled up in his seat for the remainder of the flight. 7,645 miles and 14 hours, 35 minutes later we landed in Miami. Instead of checking our bags, we had carried 'em on ... they were now quite heavy between Wendy's nick-nacks, marketing material Wendy was bringing back (shades of all the computer magazines and Wall Street Journals I had two weeks earlier). I wanted to try to make the earlier American flight ... but due to the headwinds; we missed it by about 5-10 minutes ... darn ... but worth a try. So after my arms fall off lugging these around, we finally check 'em; are relaxing for a bit in the AA lounge, check some Emails (thanx for the notes), and are about to head off for our flight. BTW, Wendy kept asked ... "when do we see Dirkster" Should be soon now! ;-) alek