The Eagle is on it’s way

If you have followed our previous post “Anyone coming near Amsterdam from New England soon?” looking for help with travelling with a wheelchair, we wanted to let you know that it is on it’s way!

Our friend Johnathan was able to check-in at Boston, and hopefully he and his daughter, and the wheelchair will arrive safely in Amsterdam early in the morning. We are hoping to get a gate pass so we can thank them personally — give big hugs and lots of coffee because it will be early!

Wow, hard to believe that we may have actually pulled this off, with a lot of help from very kind souls. We will will keep you posted when it arrives…

Note: Before this all happened, Diane who we bought it from drove the chair from Plymouth NH to Nashua (about 3-4 hours roundtrip). After that, Johnathan needed to get the chair to Boston Logan airport, along with his daughter and all of their luggage. Thankfully, Sue helped with that. Thanks for all your help everyone!

The Eagle has landed!

We woke up at 5:00 in the morning and headed out to the airport ready for whatever might happen. We had already seen that Johnathan’s flight was delayed, and were worrying the whole time that it might have something to do with the wheelchair he checked, when clearly he or his daughter Emily are in no way disabled.

We got some coffee outside of arrivals, hoping that maybe we would see them or be able to reach Johnathan on his mobile. We were not able to reach Johnathan on his mobile, but later we saw that he e-mailed to say that they had to scramble through customs and get a new flight because of a delay that was caused by thunderstorms. That was a big relief that it was not caused by the wheelchair. Luckily they managed to get a new flight and made their way safely to Madrid.

Not really knowing how to collect baggage on a a flight we were not on, we went in search of the wheelchair. We were told to go to “door 16” to get access to the baggage claim/customs area. It took us quite a long  time to find “door 16”, including a visit to lost-and-found in the basement and a few other places, There was also the usual chaos at international arrivals, but finally someone we asked who worked there was pretty friendly about it and showed us an obscure door that was not at all easy to see was our searched after “door 16”.

When we finally entered “door 16” the woman guarding access to the baggage area was quite formidable, and like a nazi camp guard you see in films (understandable, but quite intimidating). After we explained our story for the 5th time that morning, she eventually let us through. I don’t think she would have done it if Rob had not charmed her — batting eyelashes and all.  I think I even almost saw her smile just a little bit for a second as went through.

We felt a bit like we were doing something naughty, and were afraid that things might not go very well from there. When we finally made our way to the right baggage area it was like eureka! There it was sitting in the special handling area just waiting for us. After a quick photo, which must have seemed rather odd, we grabbed it and made our way to the exit. It’s funny, because we both felt a bit like we were doing something wrong, we just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

It’s not easy pushing someone in a wheelchair (or being pushed) and trying to juggle another wheelchair wrapped up tight in bubble wrap, especially with loads of very tired people and baggage around. Rob needed to push himself, with only one hand and foot, which is really difficult and takes quite a long time. It was also very chaotic and Rob can get a bit flustered with too much noise and activity around him. While I was trying to let him know the right way to go, he kept needing to stop to see where he was, which was also causing more chaos with the people around him.

While he was trying to get out of the gate, with me already on one side outside of customs and Rob on the other side inside customs, the gate slammed shut. A flashing red light like on top of a police car went off and this recorded message came on very loudly and kept repeating “Please leave the area, this area is not safe”.

Needless to say, we were a bit freaked out, along with the other people who were also locked in/out of customs. With security being what it is at airports, it was a very tense few minutes. Visions of me needing to do a repeat with the guard to get back in was absolutely not what I wanted to deal with, especially with Rob not there and trapped on the other side. Luckily, they finally must have realised that we were not terrorists and opened the gate for us so Rob could get through. Huge sigh of relief.

From there on it was smooth sailing and we came home to open it up. As Rob said very sadly, “I would never have planned to be happy to be opening a wheelchair at 50 years old”. I can only sadly sympathize with him on that, because it’s not what either of had planned, but we were eagerly waiting to open it. Even the dogs were excited about it.

Happily, Rob was  really pleased with the new chair. He said “this is a stayer” and that it is like “night and day” compared to the chair he had been slogging around in for 2 years. He has been wheeling around the house and getting to places he just couldn’t before, with much less effort. We have lots of adjustments to make, but we think it will work well for him.

Having a good quality chair means more freedom, and hopefully makes everything a little easier for him. That makes me really happy, because I was not sure how this was going to work out — it was a big leap of hope/faith in many ways.

So it is a happy ending to a rather logistically complicated wheelchair journey. We can’t thank Diane and Johnathan enough for all of their help. We also want to thank Emily, who was probably wondering why the heck they were having to deal with this on their vacation, and also Sue who drove them to the airport. You guys are all superstars to us! And thanks also to everyone who offered to help.