My African adventure actually started the night before I left with what I discovered is truly an authentic African experience without even having to leave Boise-a flight delay!
I had finished packing my bags around midnight. The reason behind my procrastination is a whole 'nother tale. I then turned my focus toward the process of checking in online. My itinerary, purchased through an online booking agency called Vayama, had me flying United from Boise through Chicago then to Dulles and then transferring to South African for the final leg to Dakar. To my dismay, my first flight of the day, scheduled to leave at 7:37am had been delayed to 9am, thereby getting me to Chicago a mere 10 minutes before my flight to Dulles was to take off! So as bleary eyed as I was, I had to deal with 30 minute hold times and customer service reps from India!
An hour and three phone calls later, I was booked on a new flight through Denver that left Boise at 6am. I went upstairs, informed my father in law of the change, changed my alarm clock and crashed. At around 4:30am, I jerked awake with the sudden realization that if I didn't get to the airport right away, I'd miss my flight! Thanks to my father in law and the moderate size of the Boise airport, I didn't miss it. I did have one more bump before take off however.
In my mad dash out of the house, I had grabbed a couple things out of the dryer and put a couple of last minute things in my bag. I had also taken some things out not wanting to be over weight and have that cause me a delay. The check in line was pretty long as was the line through security. By the time I was in security, I had worked up a pretty good sweat and had to juggle my bag in order to get my sweatshirt off and everything else in order to get through the check point smoothly. It was at this time that I just so happened to run my thumb along my ring finger as I sometimes do to rearrange my wedding ring and found to my horror that it was GONE!!! I was practically in tears when I got to the scanners and told the security ladies, yes, luckily ladies, that I had possibly dropped my ring in the airport somewhere between the check-in counter and there but that I had no time to search for it because my plane was about to take off.
Well, these kind souls quickly took action and helped x-ray my bag, get my contact info, gave me the airport's lost and found info, did another x-ray of my bag because of a very "suspicious" hard drive cord was sending weird readings, gave me a pat on the shoulder and I got to my plane with 5 minutes to spare!
I am happy to report that the rest of my trip was very uneventful. AND during my layover in Dulles, I got word from Boise that my ring had come off when I was digging through the dryer and it was safe and sound!!!
The dawning of the next day found me landing in Dakar International Airport.
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