The trip to Kenya was a little stressful . . . or more to the point the trip to JFK. My flight was at 5:40 PM and I did not leave the house until 2:45 . . . on my way to Stamford to pickup my rental car . . . but stopping by work first to drop off my car. I arrived at Hertz and got my car at 3:45. I arrived at the airport at 4:50, found out that Hertz had moved and access to Terminals 1-3 were blocked by police activity, thus creating a bad deal of traffic. I got to the terminal and tried going directly to the gate but was rebuffed at Security and sent to the check-in counter. When I got down to KLM departures I told them I had a flight to Amsterdam in 20 minutes and they sent me to the Ticket Office. There were two people working there, each with a single customer. 10 minutes later I was still waiting with no end in sight and I was mentally going over other options on how to get to Amsterdam . . . possibly catching an American Airlines flight in an hour.
10 Minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave I heard them talking over the radios about people going to Nairobi and 1 person being missing. I told one of the people at the Ticket Office counter that I was that person, but she seemed indifferent. I looked over to the normal Check-In people and saw a guy talking on the radio there. I went up to him and told him that I was the missing passenger to Nairobi and he asked if I had any bags to check while he talked to the plane on the radio. I told him that I had one (not very large) bag to check and he told me to grab my stuff and run after him.
Running through the airport laden with bags is always the best way to start a vacation. So I guess I was lucky in more ways than one! I made it back to Security, breezed through, ran past customs without stopping, and was joined by another KLM employee who had a baggage check sticker for me but who decided I could just take the bag on the plane. I was handed my boarding pass and met Dan Wharton at the door of the airplane. (He was blocking it from closing!)
After chugging as much water as I could find I settled in for a leisurely 6 hour flight to Amsterdam. The flight, food and service were quite good, I slept through the movie (Snow Falling on Cedars) and probably got 2-3 hours of sleep over all. One other interesting thing to note: about a week before our flight an Egypt Air flight from JFK had crashed. Allegations were that one of the crew had overpowered the single person in the cockpit sufficiently to force the plane into a nose dive that resulted in the crash. Our pilot came on the radio and mentioned, in passing, that there were at least two pilots in the cockpit at all times. Just in case we were wondering I guess.