HSU Insider

It's a Wrap!

• By Dave Coffield
• Posted July 7, 2006 10:38 AM
• 1 Comment

I planned to end the trip with a story titled “Postcard from the Edge� yesterday. The day was challenging, to say the least, but a good night’s rest put things in better perspective.

The last entry in the Boston blog should read: “and they all arrived safely in Abilene at 4:00 a.m. Thursday completing a near perfect journey.� Unfortunately, like Dr. Dorothy’s long overdue luggage, stuck on some eternal mobius loop, we seemed to cross over into a strange land, forever waiting, forever flying….

The trip home started well enough. The band, the horse riders, and the adult coordinators all arrived at Logan airport at pretty much the same time. We even checked in with a minimum of discomfort; no trophies for security (no potentially hazardous hand lotion or shampoo this time, although there were several pairs of socks in front of me that would qualify as WMD’s), all of the instruments made it, the weather outside was great.

It got worse. Shortly after arriving at the boarding gate, our flight was delayed for weather in Atlanta; first an hour, then two, eventually five. We left Boston a little after midnight and entered the twilight zone.

We’d missed everything that could take us to Dallas, but the carrier promised a solution early in the morning. The best bet was a standby crew and aircraft to take us directly to DFW. When that didn’t materialize, we noticed the airline staff also failed to materialize. The gates were deserted and the students were huddling under blankets in a cold, empty space.

Ticketing and boarding agents were actually sequestered in a back room because they had no idea how to accommodate the 48 person group marooned at their gate. Of course an airline can’t control the weather, but a word of encouragement, some communication, even a note scrawled in crayon, would have been nice. I noticed a twitch starting in Dr. Dorothy’s brow.

As the morning progressed, (and after several calls to the carrier’s corporate offices) the staff decided we weren’t going to go away and woke up someone at home, who woke up another person, who woke up someone who could make a decision.

When the “decision-maker� arrived, he made a few calls and motioned us to a gate. The flight plan (I kid you not) actually changed 4 times in the time it took to walk 50 feet. Eventually, we were shipped off to CHICAGO with the hope that we would have a better chance of getting to Dallas that day. After a night in the Atlanta airport, we were going to the windy city.

After 30 hours without significant sleep we weren’t really sure we would ever make it home. Like spirits that ride the abandoned New York subway lines, we were the eternal riders of the sky.

We were split into two groups. One left for DFW early and waited for 10 hours in Dallas. The second group followed 10 hours later.

I’ll spare you the rest of the story, but we did arrive in Abilene at 9:30 last night. Other than an occasional cat-nap, no one had slept for two days. Dr. Dorothy did catch up with his luggage; It had never left the airport.

But, we ARE back. The Six White Horses are traveling through Branson Missouri, and should be home soon (we were worried they'd beat us home). I can’t tell you what an honor it was to travel with the Cowboy Band and Six White Horses riders. I’ve never met a more mature, helpful, inquisitive, gracious, sincere, and big-hearted group of students in my life. Everyone took delays in stride, and actively engaged the people, landmarks, and history of the city we visited. As ambassadors for Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, and the Big Country, they did their job well.