Which Way Is Up?
Back in 2023, Molly, Maisy and I joined our beautiful friend Deb on a tour of Israel and Jordan, ‘walking in Jesus’ steps’. We had a fantastic tour group and all got on like a house on fire, staying in touch regularly. Deb suggested that our next adventure as a group could be to visit Türkiye and Greece, ‘walking in the steps of the apostle Paul’.
Now the trip is coming to fruition and this time our whole family is coming along for the ride. It’s bitter sweet that Deb can’t be with us but we know she’s walking with us in spirit and we will be thinking of her every step of the way. Janine from our tour group even got some beautiful little pins made, reminding us of Deb as we travel.
Knowing you have a late flight can be blessing and a curse - the organised amongst us getting packed and raring to go, having to twiddle their thumbs until it’s time to leave - and the procrastinators of the family leaving everything until the last minute (I’ll leave you to guess who’s who).
Our incredibly generous, gorgeous friend Keryn, offered to collect us and our haul of luggage, 4 hours ahead of take-off, and deposit us at the airport in plenty of time. Gnarly traffic in the tunnel made for a slow old trip but we arrived, flopping out of our Kia-can-of-sardines, wheeling our way to a reunion with our tour group for a quick team photo, still with 3 hours up our sleeves. Sam met us there and we proceeded to check-in.
We amused ourselves by staging our very own game show: ‘Guess The Jones Family Members’ Bag Weights’. Molly had dropped some hints, asking us: ‘how many pairs of undies do you think I packed?’ 10? 15? 20? The guesses were coming thick and fast. We were all open-mouthed to find the answer was a staggering…wait for it…29! No one can accuse her of not being prepared.
Maisy was the first to step up to the plate, her bag coming in at a modest 18kg. She was quite chuffed with her score but this sent waves of panic through her closest competitor, none other than the packing cube aficionado, her dear old Dad, Ross-‘Light-Packer’-Jones. Rossco approached the weigh-in with a confident swagger, which proved justified when his bag tipped the scales at a mere 16kg. I may have spied a fist pump from the corner of my eye.
Toby, who had surprisingly applied a Marie Kondo-style rolling method in his luggage, came in next with just 21kg and the surprises kept coming when my bag was well under the permitted 30kg, only weighing a measly 24kg. It wasn’t unexpected that the Undies Queen might have some weight in her bag (25.5kg) but the Heaviest Bag of the Day Award was taken out by our first-born, Sam, who confessed he was toting 500g of coffee beans (who knows what other hefty things he had in there) all contributing towards his grand total weight of 27.6kg.
Keryn had casually mentioned in the car, she’d seen on the news that there was some sort of airport workers’ strike happening today. We hadn’t thought anything of it until we saw (and heard) the mob of disgruntled placard wavers, making laps of the checkout-in counters, shouting about their pay and conditions. The 2 part strike had held a morning session and now an evening session was scheduled between 6-8pm, chosen no doubt to disrupt as many travellers as was humanly possible. The ground staff walked along our queue, explaining the security teams were on strike with only a skeleton staff available, urging us to join the queue with haste.
It wasn’t until we walked towards security that the magnitude of the strike became clear. This was the most massive queue we’d ever seen. Stemming from the security gates, this queue snaked all the way down through the food court to the far wall of the airport terminal and back along past ALL the check-in counters so we ended up almost back where we started. We were in total disbelief as we kept going to search for where it ended so we could join it. There must have been 3000 people in this mammoth line and I wish I was joking. When the queue had lapped the airport, they started adding in bollards with zig-zagging lanes to accommodate the ever-swelling crowd of nervous travellers.
We joined the line at 6:13pm and by the time we were actually loading our bags into the x-ray machine it was 9pm. Insane! Pointing to my watch, and with a look that I hoped conveyed the urgency we were feeling, told the security guy that our plane was due to take-off in FIVE MINUTES (from Gate 59, which sounded like an awfully long walk!). Frustration ensued as Ross’, Maisy’s and my bag all got pulled over for further investigation. As Leyton Hewitt would say: ‘COME ON!!’
Maisy, Molly and Toby raced ahead, yelling to the staff pointing the way, ‘there’re 3 more coming!’ ‘FINAL CALL!’ echoed through the terminal as we ran all the way to the plane door. Yikes that was close!
I won’t bore you with details of the flight, only to say it involved a baby behind us, whose high pitched, high decibel screeching and wailing was loud enough to drown out our movies through headphones and punctuated at least 10 of the 18 hours flight time, and her brother who spent the entire flight kicking the backs of Ross’ and Sam’s seats. Fun and games. (As an aside, Turkish Airlines has a great range of movies and delicious food.)
