Our adventure has begun!! We left San Antonio on August 11th, and after months of preparation, paperwork, vet visits, frantic e-mails to England customs personnel, and more paperwork, we left Lego at the San Antonio Airport cargo drop-point. That particular part of the trip was made especially difficult by the staff working at said cargo drop-point--it seemed to both Travis and me that they had never heard of an animal being shipped overseas before, that this was their first foray into live cargo. They did not request specific paperwork that we knew to be required at the customs checkpoint in Houston; I suggested that it would be needed and they vaguely muttered that yes, probably wouldn't hurt.
Knowing that Lego would not go through any sort of customs screening until his layover in Houston, I was uneasy, thinking that if there were a problem during his paperwork review, Travis and I would be unavailable to correct it or provide additional documentation, as we would already be in the middle of our own transAtlantic flight! Nevertheless, we boarded our flight and hoped for the best.
Our flight was uneventful; we landed in London Heathrow at 0640 on the 12th and breezed through customs and baggage pickup. The base had sent a taxi to retrieve us and the very kind driver, Bob, was waiting just past the securtity point to take us to the Animal Reception Centre down the street in order to pick up Lego. Since Legs was scheduled to arrive on the flight after ours at 0930, Bob was kind enough to take us to a nearby cafe, where we shared our first British meal--fried eggs and bacon and sausage on fried bread...with chips, of course. We chatted (well, Bob chatted--in detail, about every person he had ever driven in his long and accomplished career as a taxi driver) until we returned to the Animal Reception Centre with high hopes of picking up our little black dog.
These hopes would soon be dashed, however, as the flight which Lego was supposed to take had been delayed, and would not arrive until 1330. The especially alarming bit of news however, was that the personnel at Heathrow saw that four dogs had been manifested on the flight, and that Lego was not among them. It appeared, they said, that Lego's paperwork had not cleared, and he was still in Houston. The staff at Houston, however, said they did not have any little one-eyed, black puppies in animal waiting area, and with that, Continental Airlines lost our dog.
The best thing to do, we were told, was to wait for the 1330 flight. Perhaps Lego had been put on the flight without anyone noticing...? (At this point, Travis and Bob and I began grumbling that FedEx packages were tracked much better than live animals) Bob was able to rearrange his afternoon schedule, and he very patiently agreed to wait with us to find out if Lego was on the afteroon flight. He also took us to a British grocery store in order to get some British currancy at the ATM, and Hobnob cookies, which are quite possibly the most delicious things on this planet.
After waiting several hours, we checked in with the Animal Reception Centre at about 1400. The staff told me that they did not yet have information about whether Lego was on the flight or not. Houston still could not find him, and the pet travel "agency" which Continental required us to hire *in order to fly Lego could not confirm whether Lego's paperwork had cleared US Customs. *By "hire," I mean that we had to pay them exorbitant amounts of money and they did...nothing.
It took 2.5 hours after the flight landed for news to get to us that Lego had indeed been on the flight--he was safe and sound, fed and watered, and we only needed to wait a few more hours for customs to clear his paperwork. We left the airport at 1730, after having waited for Legs for 9.5 hours, longer than our total flying time. At this time, we hit stop-and-go London afternoon traffic.
We arrived on the base in our little temporary housing unit, starving (Hobnobs can only take you so far) and exhausted. Thankfully, our Air Force sponsors are very thoughtful people and they had brought us basic food supplies in preparation for our arrival. We ate turkey sandwhiches and milk and promptly fell asleep, all three of us.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
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