65 First to the Plane
My departure day had arrived and we drove away from the house at 5:00 a.m., Dr. Arias getting me to the airport in plenty of time.
I inquired at the desk if there was any way for me to get a seating upgrade but the folks at check in weren’t very sympathetic or accommodating.
Nevertheless, being in a wheelchair does have its benefits in that you get to bypass everybody else standing in line.
This preferential treatment allowed me to be the first person to the departure lounge where I claimed a couple of seats to lie down for a nice nap before we were called upon to board. Hey, so far this was better than I had braced myself for.
Again, I received first class treatment, as I was the first passenger called upon and then wheeled right to the entrance of the plane, where I waited. And waited, and waited.
Of course no one was explaining to me why I was waiting, so I asked everybody whom I thought might know, and I eventually found out that a special wheelchair, an aisle chair, was needed at this transfer point so that I could be wheeled down the aisle of the plane to my seat.
Unfortunately it hadn’t arrived by the time the first passengers started showing up.
So I sat helplessly there by the entrance of the plane as a couple hundred people filed by and finally got settled in ahead of me.
I inquired at the desk if there was any way for me to get a seating upgrade but the folks at check in weren’t very sympathetic or accommodating.
Nevertheless, being in a wheelchair does have its benefits in that you get to bypass everybody else standing in line.
This preferential treatment allowed me to be the first person to the departure lounge where I claimed a couple of seats to lie down for a nice nap before we were called upon to board. Hey, so far this was better than I had braced myself for.
Again, I received first class treatment, as I was the first passenger called upon and then wheeled right to the entrance of the plane, where I waited. And waited, and waited.
Of course no one was explaining to me why I was waiting, so I asked everybody whom I thought might know, and I eventually found out that a special wheelchair, an aisle chair, was needed at this transfer point so that I could be wheeled down the aisle of the plane to my seat.
Unfortunately it hadn’t arrived by the time the first passengers started showing up.
So I sat helplessly there by the entrance of the plane as a couple hundred people filed by and finally got settled in ahead of me.
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