It is 10:25 PM on saturday night and the whole US Collegiate Taekwondo Team has settled down in Madrid. Yes, we are still in Madrid, Spain, instead of Vigo. It has been a long day of travel…more than 24 hours at airports, in fact.
We left boston Friday morning at 11:30 AM. We flew pretty quickly to JFK via JetBlue, then we hung out in the terminal for around 5 hours. The Iberia checkin terminal didn’t even open until an hour after we arrive. but eventually we make it to Madrid, after a 6 hour flight, which we thought would be the worst leg of the trip.
The poomse team left JFK first at 6 PM, and arrived in Madrid at around 7 AM. The gate was just as decorative as I remember it from Pamplona and the slanted part of the floor was still surprisingly comfortable, even for a slab of marble. we waited for a few hours until the rest of the team arrived. Spirits were pretty high despite being really tired after a nearly sleepless night.
However, it was unclear what gate our flight from Madrid to Vigo was. It was also unclear exactly what time boarding would start, because our flight was not listed with an exact gate, and the time kept being moved back. The problem? Delays caused by some trouble with airline workers’ unions in Europe. So we all settle down, have some food (jamon, tapas) and play Egyptian Ratscrew and Set.
Suddenly, RDC runs over and says, “What does it mean if our flight says ‘last call’?” And we all jump up as a group and run down the impossibly long terminal from one end to another, trying to find our actual gate. Turns out wherever it was supposed to be, it had left 10 minutes ago. It was around 3:15. We were scheduled to board then, but in this airport changes are not announced.
For the next 6 hours or so we are either sitting around reading, sleeping or trying to figure out what else our options are. (The last was done by a few people who were more in charge, or more fluent in spanish.) I won’t really go into the details but nothing much happened except everyone fell asleep, people walking by gawked at us and wondered who we were, and eventually we got good news that we had rebooked for the next morning and had hotels for the evening. So we are stuck in Madrid for the night. One day down, a few practices missed, but at least we are still all composed and will be relatively rested tomorrow. And tomorrow, Vigo!
