Travel, Taylor Style...

As a rule, traveling with the Taylors generally comes with a story best told over a beer or two. People travel without a hitch every day. Entire families get on a plane or in the car at a point of origin, and pile out at some final destination. I've seen pictures; I know for a fact it can be done. This seems impossible for us. We lose luggage, leave stuff on airport x-ray belts and forget our Sunday Best when attending family weddings. We have had trips where six people took 3 airlines to 2 different airports. We send kids one place and they end up in another. My fondest travel memory involves Jenn and a trip to Nicaragua where she told her dad to drop her off at the wrong airport. We like to call that one the Great Bone of Contention of 2006.

Phil arrived in Singapore on Wednesday. His flight was due to arrive at 11:55pm. We watched on the internet. His plane was early! We knew of one potential hiccup - he was coming into the country knowing he was overstaying his visa, however we know a 5-day trip out will extend it. John left early for the airport armed with a bus ticket to Kuala Lempur to prove he had a trip planned and promised to call as soon as Phil crossed into the country. At 12:45, the phone rang. I heard John's voice. Two words.

"No Phil"

Naturally, I panicked. I went from dozing on the couch to high gear. After a couple minutes of asking silly questions that John could not answer and doing a nice rendition of the Holy Shit Dance, I agreed to call United and try and ascertain our next steps. So I called United. An accomodating and maddeningly calm agent reassured me that she was positive everything was fine, she would check the status of his ticket. Long pause. "It appears," she told me somewhat tentatively, "That your husband boarded the plane in Dulles, but did not get on in Japan. Are you sure he wanted to come home?"

Well. I informed her that I was happily married, of course my husband wants to come home, and anyways we were talking about my son. To this she replied. "Oh. FAA rules prevent me from giving you any information." Then she clammed up. No she could not page, no she did not know how to reach him, no she could not tell me anything else, no she could not help me. A supervisor said all the same stuff.

I called John back and told him to come on home. Phil was stuck in Japan. No flights were going out of there until the next night. I called our older kids and made sure they all had contact information should Phil get ahold of them. I sat at the edge of panic. Jenn wanted to file a missing persons report so we could get ahold of the Embassy in Japan. Matt said he figured that while it was very likely that Phil was in jail on some trumped up charge, he had heard that the Japanese have paper walls, plus Phil had taken a karate class when he was 7, so he could probably bust out in no time.

John came in and while we lamented the situation, Phil called. We had forgotten to give him the address here, so he got delayed at the border. They finally waved him through, but by then John was gone. Our missing son was in a cab at 2am with a cabbie who had just handed him a map and asked him to talk him in. Did we have any beer.

We went out front to wait and pay the cab driver. I have never been so relieved to see one of my kids in my life. We drank our beer and went upstairs to sleep. I took him around the next day and not only was he enthusiastic about his surroundings, he had more stamina than I did.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's entry; "Phil and the Indian Facial."