Unexpected Adventure II

So today was another one in a series of unexpected adventures. My day started out real early in that I was in Michigan to escort my mother home from my sisters where she has been for the last three weeks. Michigan is 3 hours ahead of Washington in time so I was up at 3AM Seattle time. That is where the adventure starts.

We had no problem in the airport and easily got loaded onto the aircraft. Northwest Airlines is the only Airline I know of that has “Handicap” seating in the aircraft. These are seats near the door and they have the ability for the seats near them to fold flat and the aisle arms to go up making it easy to get someone that is unable to stand/walk from an aisle chair into the airplane seats.

Four hours and 20 minutes later we land in Seattle and taxi up to the gate. Because they need to bring a specially designed wheelchair onto the plane to get my mom off of it we get to wait until everyone else is off the plane before we can get off. This time we are waiting and waiting, the new crew for the next flight for this aircraft comes on, the cleaning crew comes on and cleans the plane and we are waiting and waiting.

Finally the ‘check-in’ crew came and checks on us and I explain that I need an aisle chair to get her off. The folks from operations are supposed to come and get my mother off we are told but no one is around. Finally the check-in lady brings the chair to me and asks if I know how to do it. Finally, I get my mom into the aisle chair and off the plan onto the jet way. I look around and my mother’s wheelchair that had been sitting on the jet way earlier, while we were waiting, is not there. Yep, they lost my mothers wheelchair. Just then the operations guy shows up with one of the airport wheelchairs so I get her off of the jet way so that they can load the next flight and get that plane out of there. As we come up the ramp I see a man in a wheelchair waiting for us to get off so he can be boarded. I look at his chair to make sure it is not my mothers and it wasn’t.

We stand off at the side as I try and explain that I have my own wheelchair and want to know where it is, I cannot leave without it. I am working hard not to ‘go postal’ and get my self arrested at the airport that would be a Federal Offense. There are numerous folks that come up to us and trying to take the airport chair from us. Remember my mother is unable to walk and is sitting in the wheelchair. I won’t move until I know where my wheelchair is. 30 minutes later they bring up this ‘personal’ wheelchair to us. Guess what it isn’t ours, I look at the tag and it is from the guy that had just got on the plane we got off of. They were trying to get me to take that wheelchair telling me someone else must have taken mine and left this one. I told them that they needed to hurry and get that chair on that plane before it took off and that man was in the same situation we were in when he got to his destination.

Just as I finish telling them to put that chair on that plane a Northwest agent comes over and ask us about the chair. Apparently our chair was in the lost and found in the baggage claim area. Off we go to baggage claim and find the wheelchair.

How that chair ended up down in baggage claim is anyone’s guess; the baggage folks just took it there instead of putting it on the jet way except I saw it on the jet way. Maybe someone else took it to help someone down to baggage claim and realized it wasn’t one of the airport chairs. Who knows?

I get my mother transferred from the airport wheelchair into her own and we are ready to find her checked bags and a porter to help us get everything out to the parking garage and into the van. Guess what no porter. I finally make it out to the van, get everyone loaded and we get on our way; the end of another adventure with my mother.

I guess the moral to this story is that my mother and I are just lucky to have survived another adventure.