Waiting On Parts

The 9 am email on my Blackberry updated the traveling delegation on our status for the day. We’re waiting on a windshield for the 727 and its expected to arrive around 3:00 pm and if all goes well we will go wheels up at 6:00 pm. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Bill and his VIP friends have already arrived in Addis Ababa. Since half of the delegation is still here in Newark, scheduled events have been canceled. I am really bummed that we will miss the tour of the 1,000 year old Church of Bet Gioris in Lalibela. I was really looking forward to that. The staff is still optimistic that we will get to Ethiopia in time to have one large event before heading to Rwanda.

Our group, which started out with 28 people has now dropped down to 27. Yusef Jackson, son of Jesse Jackson, apparently had no confidence in the 727 after its repeated malfunctions.

As the day progressed, we were moved from one Marriott to another where we sat in a bar eating cold burger sliders and veggies with dip. We passed the time until we moved back to the Signature terminal at around 8:00 pm for an 8:30 departure. Unfortunately, we lost two more people. We are now down to 25. This is becoming an episode of Survivor.

It wasn’t until almost 10:00 pm that we learned of a new problem with our plane. The valve that transfers fuel to the engines has failed again, a problem that will surely be the final straw for the ol’ 727. The food from the plane, as well as the wine, was brought to us so we could eat while we waited to learn our fate. We drank red wine and champagne in Styrofoam cups (I don’t recommend this) while eating rubber chicken and eggplant parmesan until midnight when we were returned to the Marriott. More points!

The trip was in question. More people contemplated dropping out. Staff was having trouble locating planes with crews that had immunizations for the countries we were going to visit, not to mention visas. Several ideas were being floated. Divide us up in two Gulfstreams, book us on commercial flights or maybe even swim. One guy jokingly said “we could have been there already if we had ran.” The last we heard before hitting the pillow was there was a plane in the Bahamas that we could use. We just needed to get us to the plane and find a crew. We're still 25 strong, we'll see what the morning brings.