Happy birthday, Mark! You too, Gienah and Taunia!
Today, the Jamboree is winding down. This morning was our last ticketed session. Brian came in for a few minutes. He was in the area because Shawn White, Olympic snowboarder, was visiting the mountain boarding area today. I asked him if he was going to make it out to the midway and finish his engineering badge, but he didn’t think he would. He was planning to head back to camp and pack everything up, including his tent, and sleep out under the stars tonight.
After lunch, we started taking apart and packing up all the things we had spent three or four days putting together. The schedule called for us to spend a day and a half at the task. We were done by 4:00, with all the semis and trucks of vendor equipment rolling away or already gone.
By the time I got back to Wilcox, I realized that I had nothing at all to do tomorrow, and that it might be possible to go home a day early. I was scheduled to leave the fort on the 8:00 am shuttle Thursday, and fly out of Richmond Thursday evening.
First, I checked the shuttle schedule. There were departures for the three nearest airports at 12 and 2 tomorrow, and at 6 and 8 Thursday. Then I called the airline. Several times I got a recording that due to heavy call volume they were unable to answer my call, click. Eventually, I got through, gave Brooklyn my flight numbers and asked if I could move my itinerary up one day. She said that she could get me a seat on a flight leaving at 12:55 pm tomorrow, but everything else was already full. I told her thanks, but that I wouldn’t be able to make it there that early.
I asked a few of the people I knew in the barracks if any of them were headed south and had an extra seat, but I wasn’t able to find one.
I called Pam to let her know that I had thought I could make it home early, but I wasn’t able to make it work. She said it sounded like I had exhausted all my possibilities. I told her all but one, then I set the phone down and shouted down the length of the barracks asking if anyone was headed south and had an extra space in their car. Miraculously, I got a taker!
So I told Pam goodbye and that I’d see her tomorrow, hung up, and started throwing my stuff into my bag. I was trying to get the airline back on the phone the whole time I packed. Still on hold while I loaded my things into Jim’s truck. On hold the whole time I checked out with the housing office/tent. I got through just about the time we pulled out of the Wilcox camp area.
The girl I spoke to got everything sorted out for me and filled me in on details that Brooklyn hadn’t given me. The flight at 12:55 went to PDX, but routed through Newark instead of Houston. It would land in Portland at 10 pm instead of the 11 pm arrival of my original flight. I said that would be fine. Then she told me that there would be a $150 charge for reticketing, and the difference in fare would be $943.
Jim was very nice about turning around and dropping me off at Wilcox again.
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