PWA Lanzarote - The worst travel ever!
03 July 2007
Me and Tine supposed to fly to Lanzarote
on 30th of June. The plan was to arrive in the afternoon at 5. It
was close for the competition which was starting on 1st of July.
Everything should be fine - arrive at 5, get transfered to the
hotel, maybe rig and sail a bit, have a nice sleep and start the
competition on the next day.
Of course we haven't calculated with "Murphy's law".
First there was a traffic jam on the highway from Salzburg to
Munich, where Tine was stuck and therefore he arrived a bit late
for the checkin. Ok - so far so good - checkin-time - we had 6 bags
of windsurfing equipment (as Tine had to bring F2 boards to the
Canaries for some teamriders) - all the bags to the Condor counter.
Checkin and we had to carry all the bags to the bulky luggage
counter - who sent us one floor higher to another bulky luggage
counter. So we carried everything one level up.
Well at the checkin the lady told us that boarding starts in 10
minutes, so we did not have any time to park our cars in the
parkinghouse. Fortunately the guy from Kranzeder parking just took
our keys and drove our cars to his parking place for the week. So
we could go through the security controls and go on board of our
plane. One more thing - fuck, the windsurfing equipment, they just
drove away some of our bags and told us they don't fit in the
plane...they will come one day later...
So far so bad - we were sitting in the plane, rolling around on the
airport - but didn't take off - some technical problem, so some
technicans checked the computers - after 2 hours of sitting there,
the captain told us - "sorry, but the flight is cancelled..".
Almost going crazy already, we went back to a transit gate - after
another 2 hours of waiting, they told us that the plane will go
next day 6am!!
So what shall we do now - 6am, the flight time is 4hours 10
minutes, there is -1hour time difference, we would need half an
hour to get the luggage and another 20 minutes for the transfer.
Thanks to Remko who was already at the Event we heard that
skippersmeeting should be at 10 and first possible start at 10:30.
Well we could just make it or just miss it...
We decided to go for it - Tine: "... if you go for a mission, you
have to finish it...". Checked our 8 bags back in already, went to
a hotel that we got for the night. The transfer back to the airport
was at 4am and at 4:30 there was a 200m long queue in front of the
counter.
And of course, at 6, when we were supposed to take off, the plane
wasn't even half full. So we waited another half an hour in the
plane until all passengers were there and another half an hour
somewhere on the airfield as we were not in the schedule and had to
wait until we got a permission to start.
So far so bad - arriving at 10:15 in Lanzarote (remember:
skippersmeeting at 10, first possible start at 10:30) we received
our equiment (the only positive aspect of the flight) and hurried
to the event-area.
Arriving there, went out of the car - "Rossi you just missed your
heat.... TEEEEEEEE ...". The horn for Tine's heat was just
resonating and the red flag (3 minutes to start) went up.
Tine made the best out of it and took his harness and Remko's
gear, unfortunately he wasn't able to beat Nico Akgazcyan, but
lets say after that journey we didn't care anymore...
The story for one of the worst trips to a windsurfing competiton we
had till now...
greets from Lanzarote
Rossi
