London – Boston

The handicapped traveler service of British Airways was far below par. Although I had requested a wheelchair, at the check-in, I was asked to go to another place to get help. Go figure! I shuffled there, and I was asked to wait. A little later, someone came with the wheelchair and took me through the security and to the gate. There were altogether five people who needed special assistance and we were asked to walk to the gate. I told the woman that I had requested a wheelchair, and I was not about to walk anymore.

They took two people in wheelchairs and two walking down the elevator, and I sat waiting. Meanwhile, a staff woman had been making phone calls about how to get these five people to the plane. At that point, I realized that the plane was not at the gate but out on the tarmac somewhere. Why I don’t know. After about 15 minutes those four people came back up the elevator, something did not work out. By this time they brought a wheelchair for me, and we all proceeded to gate 44 from gate 39, where all the other passengers were boarding.

At gate 44, we took an elevator down, went through the bellows to another elevator at the end, and went down to the tarmac. Now the wait started on the ground. Finally, the special truck came, they lowered the platform on the back, and we all got on it. The driver pushed the button to lift the platform, and it moved only about 2-3 inches and stopped. The next few minutes were spent asking the helpers to get off the platform, push the button, no go. The driver frantically moved around pushing levers, buttons, etc., and finally, the platform started to go up and we all got inside the cabin. We probably drove on the tarmac close to 2-3 miles to go to the waiting plane and now the cabin started moving up to the plane’s door level. It was on the opposite side of where other passengers were climbing the stairs, and we waited about five minutes for the door to open. Eventually, we were inside the plane, the stewardess helped me with my bags, and I made it to my seat.

I settled into the window seat I had reserved and took out my infrared camera to see what nice pictures nature would present to me. Taking off over London was interesting, I could see many roads and building but had no idea what they were or where they were. I continued to photograph with some breaks when there was nothing but plain white cloud cover beneath. I am not sure where, but we flew over a place where there appeared many flecks of white objects as if floating on water. Of course, what looked like flecks from the cruising altitude were probably quite sizable things. I will ask a few friends if they could identify what I captured in those photographs.

We landed in Boston on an overcast day, with the temperature around 55-57 degrees Fahrenheit. There was a little wait again for the wheelchairs, but it was not too long. Jan was waiting outside the customs doors with Barbara. It was very good to see and hug her. We waited for Dennis to pull the car to the curb and drove home. It was very nice of Dennis and Barbara to drive Jan to Logan to pick me up, I am grateful for their generosity and willingness to help.

Here are some new infrared earthscapes.