Jan 20 2011

9 months ago I had the misfortune of getting caught up in the travel disruption caused by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud. I travelled from Oslo Norway to near Liverpool UK in 46 hours – taking 7 trains, 3 cars, 2 buses & 2 boats! I met some interesting people & we all shared in our European Ash Dash to get home, to work or wherever we were going.

Last weekend I had a similar experience; it was shorter in duration, but slightly more intense because my wife was with me. We were in Tenerife on holiday and just as we were about to get collected to go to the airport on our way home, the agent informed us that our flight would be delayed as all of their planes had been diverted to collect the tourists stuck in Tunisia with riots and civil unrest causing mayhem in the country.

Under normal circumstances this would not be an issue, but I had a plane to catch for work the next day and had limited time for delay to begin with. We waited for further information to find out if the delay was going to be long or short. When the information came it was not good – they said that our current flight was now scheduled for the next evening, after I was supposed to be airborne for my work assignment.

We hopped a taxi to the airport, caught the next flight to the UK – London Gatwick and then caught a flight home to Manchester the next morning. I ended up getting home at 9 AM instead of 1 AM – not too bad. But I hadn’t slept well the difference in planned and actual was the planned sleeping time. I was collected at 3:40 PM for my work assignment, my flight out was on schedule at 5:40 and at 9:30 PM I was in my hire car driving the 200+ Km to my actual destination. A long weekend with many miles travelled, including 3 flights totalling 7 hours.

The worst bit is that the holiday was without the kids – normally OK (nice even) but with the limited time home between holiday and work I really miss them this week! Ah well, home tomorrow!