Not Over Yet
We should be home by now, or at least well on our way.
We had a nice breakfast at the B&B and a chat with our hosts, who are keen cross-country travellers themselves, but they always do it in the winter, and hence find themselves restricted to the South.
The landlady told us an amusing anecdote about going to Las Vegas and being given a hotel room which wasn't made up. This has never ever happened to us.
We went to the Salem 1630 Village to kill some time. This was a recreation of what Salem would have been like in 1630, just as the founders arrived and settled in for their first winter.
The car park for the village doubled as the car park for the little league baseball diamond, and there was a game going on. We watched until someone got a home run, and then we left for the airport. Getting to the airport was no problem, and we were soon returning the car.
A lady came up to the window, and asked "is the petrol tank full?". "Nearly". "Two thousand eighty four, is that correct?", "I'm sorry?", "Two thousand and eighty four, is that right?", "um, two thousand and eighty four what?", "do you have your paperwork?".
Even now, I have no idea whatsoever what she was talking about. She seemed happy with our paperwork and charged our credit card for the car. When we got the car it had done 4289 miles. It's now done 8803. I expect it's tired.
Our flight from Boston to Chicago went very smoothly, and we had no trouble getting to the right desk for the transfer. We were home and dry. Then they announced over the tannoy that they were looking for volounteers to forfeit the flight in exchange for $1000 each (in American Airlines credit), free accommodation and food for extra day and a flight tomorrow. OK then, seems like a good deal.
It didn't seem like such a good deal an hour later, when we were still waiting at baggage claim for our bags. It turned out that we weren't ever going to get them until we asked for them. By this point I wasn't in the best of moods. Our bags are heavy and I'd anticipated not seeing them again until we got to Birmingham. Now we're lumbered with them and we don't even have a car.
We eventually managed to get our bags to the motel shuttle area, and were driven to the Comfort Inn O'Hare where AA had booked us. We checked in and went to our room. It hadn't been made up. Salem's spooky fingers of fate reaching over to Chicago... They gave us another room and all was well.
Our free meal was nice, and included yet another Americans-not-speaking-English event. We were brought bread rolls and crackers. I opened a packet of two crackers, and ate one, then asked a passing waiter for butter, for our table had none. He didn't understand. I repeated myself. He nodded, took my wrapper, took my cracker, then walked away and returned with an empty plate. In the end, we got some butter.
Buckaroo Banzai's on TV in a bit. I look forward to it.