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Chris's Story

 12:00 Noon   We arrive at Owen Roberts Airport filled with enthusiasm and excited at the prospect of traveling to far away places. On speaking to the check in staff we are told that the boxes we have prepared for the bicycles are too big and heavy for the baggage hold despite having confirmed the dimensions with their ground staff a week earlier! We are then told that it will cost 1250 $CI to transport them to the UK!!! After thinking about it for about thirty seconds we decide to call in emergency help. Frank whizzed home to get his gear and I hurtled down to Uncle Bills on Eastern Avenue to seek the assistance of the very patient and omniscient Dennis who is the be all and end all of our entire bicycle needs. He quickly gets some cardboard bike boxes from the storeroom and in about 45 minutes we had disemboweled our two plywood 150 Lb monstrosities and had dismantled the bikes and boxed them up into two boxes weighing 30 Lbs each! After thanking him and giving thanks for Uncle Bills we hurtled back to the Airport and arrived just in time for our TV interview with CITN. We said our goodbyes and then made our way through to the Lounge.  Sitting in the Lounge I couldn’t quite believe the hassle I had just experienced and that was before I even arrived at the departure Lounge!! I suppose that it was a useful wake up call for things to come, as Egyptian officialdom is also notoriously disruptive to an organized Teutonic such as myself.

We arrived in Miami without further ado and we collect our baggage, which has arrived in its entirety to our relief. We then checked in for the flight to JFK and settled down at a snack shop to grab a bite to eat and to collect our thoughts. Making our way to our Airbus 300, which was waiting for us we settled down in our seats for the 2-½  hour flight. The road is long is the tune that was turning over in my mind.

I did just hand over the laptop to Frank for his input but for a change his eyes were glued to the in show entertainment of a cheesy episode of King of Queens. (Nothing a shock treatment of three weeks of Egyptian TV wouldn’t cure I thought to myself.) He did however promise to write a few lines on our next flight from JFK to London Heathrow .

FRANK'S STORY -  3.00 a.m. Thursday 5^th April, Day 2 somewhere over the Atlantic

Hello everybody, we are crossing the Atlantic and should arrive in London in about three hours. Our first two flights were fairly quiet with room to relax but as usual the long haul is full. I do believe Chris is now over the stress that the beginning of the trip gave him. He has now had his third meal and a short nap which has helped him considerably. It wasn’t the problem with the bicycles that stressed him which you may have been led to believe but the fact that the American Airline Representative thought he was my father ! Yes I am on a trip with my Dad Chris. After arriving in New York we had a ten minute walk to the neighbouring terminal, this took us outside due to renovations ongoing. We have also had the pleasure of a screaming baby for the whole duration of the flight which doesn’t help when you have trouble sleeping anyway. We have decided to go straight into London when we arrive and buy some necessary supplies for the trip. We are then to stay with Chris’s parents for the night before flying off to Cairo. I have thought long and hard about what to expect  on the trip and I was asked many times how I felt, I truly believe it will be one of the greatest experiences of my life and the fact that it is also meaningful, for the D.A.R.E. program, only adds to the enthusiasm I am feeling at this time. I will leave you for now as you can’t say too much about how tedious a transatlantic flight is.