The Chattanooga Girls Choir

Day 9: MILAN/CHATTANOOGA!
Friday, June 17, 2005

We traveled all night on the bus to Milan, stopping just once for a stop for what Marie-Agnès refers to as the "lady pee-pee". Our wonderful bus driver Guilano actually got us to the airport early, about 45 minutes ahead of our scheduled arrival time of 3:30 a.m. However, we then learned that the airport was closed until 4:30 a.m.! So we just backtracked up the road a bit to a roadside stop with restrooms and a snack shop and waited until it was time to return. When we got back to the airport, we had to wait until someone unlocked the airport doors at 5:00 a.m., and then waited another 1/2 hour until the KLM airlines staff showed up for work. Now it was time to say good-bye to Marie-Agnès, the kindest and most helpful person we could have hoped for to shepherd us through Italy.

The flight to Amsterdam went smoothly, with most of us napping on the way. After landing, however, we had a 20-minute taxi to our arrival gate, so that by the time we got off the plane, the boarding for our next flight had already begun, and we still faced a 25-minute walk to reach our departure gate--but for our girl on crutches, make that a 50-minute marathon. Fortunately, Michael Holden snagged an airport wheelchair, and he pushed Alyson to the next gate in record time. We all made it before the last boarding call, and soon we were winging our way to Atlanta.

This flight on KLM was MUCH nicer than our flight over--the food was good, the attendants were friendly, and there were multiple screens for viewing the movie (Clint Eastwood's boxing film "Million-Dollar Baby"). Towards the end of the flight the girls were asked to sing, so they gathered in the aisles and LuAnn directed them in singing The Star-Spangled Banner (in honor of several soldiers who were flying in our cabin, who nodded appreciatively as the choir sang) and the ever-popular Chattanooga Choo-Choo. Even in the sound-deadening acoustics of the airplane cabin, they sounded great (just not very loud), and everyone applauded enthusiastically.

In Atlanta, we sailed through Customs with few problems and headed for baggage claim. Of course, we had to have just one more travel glitch: after waiting for over a half-hour at the baggage carousel, we were informed that our luggage was still in Amsterdam, so the entire group had to go up to the ticketing level and each person had to file a lost baggage report! With just one two-finger typist to take the reports and a printer that kept jamming, the process took another 2 hours. Finally, by 5:30 we were all on the bus headed for home. Of course, we were now slowed by rush-hour traffic, but eventually we made our way to First Baptist Church and the arms of our waiting families.

It was a relatively short tour but a very rewarding one. Thanks so much especially to Tarbell for all his hard work and to LuAnn Holden for preparing the girls so well. All of Chattanooga should be proud to have these young ladies as our ambassadors.

Near the end of the flight back to the U.S., the choir sang for the passengers.

Reading, chatting, dozing while waiting to fill out lost luggage reports.

So good to be home! And no luggage to unload this time...

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