Chapter Four
Brittny
'How hard could it be?' I can't believe Care actually said that. I'm going to tell the truth here: Our trip was not very easy at all. I mean, just flying into the U.S. was pretty traumatizing. (There's your first clue.)
Where did Care leave off? Oh yeah – we were all singing. And we were talking. We made a ton of noise all the way to the airport. We were all in pretty good spirits until it came time to park. Why?
We got lost.
Mr. Weasley had absolutely no idea where he was going, and neither did the rest of us. We must have circled around the entire airport, like, six times. Did we ever think of stopping and asking someone? Of course not. That would be the intelligent thing to do. We were all becoming really frustrated, which pretty much blocked our ability to think straight. So we just circled, and circled, and circled. (Click! A picture of us driving pointlessly around the airport.)
By the time we found a parking space we were running really, really late. Our flight was going to take-off in an hour and we still had to check in, check our bags, and go through security checkpoints.
Thank God for luggage carts. Without them, I seriously think we would have missed the plane. We each rented one and loaded our trunks onto them. Then we hurried off to the Check-In stations.
We were so late that there was almost nobody waiting in our line. We grabbed our boarding passes and gave our trunks to the Sky Cab (who almost fell over when he tried to lift all of them). All we had to do now was get past security and we'd be home free!
Unfortunately, the lines for the security checkpoints were super long. There was no cutting-corners this time, however. All we could do is stand in line, wait, and hope that we didn't miss our plane.
We were three-fourths of the way through the line when we heard a beep come over the loud-speaker. "Flight 6052 from London to New York City is now boarding. Repeat: Flight 6052 from London to New York City is now boarding."
"That's our flight!" I shrieked. "We're going to miss it! Quick, somebody fake a heart attack!"
"A heart attack?" said Hermione. "What good will that do? They'll just send over the paramedics."
"Yes, but at least we'll have an excuse to cut in front of this line!" I wailed.
"Now, now, Brittny, calm down. Everything will be fine," said Mr. Weasley, though from the expression on his face it was clear that he wasn't sure it was going to be fine at all.
Lori, who had nothing better to do, snapped a picture of all of us. I was so tense I felt like strangling her. (I saw the picture later, and believe me; I have never seen a more anxious-looking group of people in my entire life.)
We finally made it to the head of the line and got past security (which was a real miracle, since the security has been tightened since September 11). I managed to find a clock in one of the little restaurants. We had exactly twenty minutes to get to our gate. There was only one thing to do: Run.
Normally, I absolutely hate running. I especially hated running in gym class when I used to attend a Muggle school. I had no idea that all of that running would prepare me for the race of a lifetime; my friends and me against time. (Wow, that sounds really deep, doesn't it?) We practically flew past people, snack bars, and gift shops with over-priced items. Now that I think about it, we must have looked a lot like the family from those Home Alone movies.
And guess what? We made it! We had a few minutes to get settled into the plane before it left the airport.
Everybody hugged Mr. Weasley good-bye and boarded the plane. (We were flying on America West airlines, in case you're curious.) It was one of those huge planes with two seats on the left, and aisle, five seats in the middle, another aisle, and then two seats on the right. Our seats were in the very back of the plane because we'd been so late.
Despite the fact that we had a very limited amount of time to get into our seats, we all began to argue over who got the three window seats. (We took up one whole row and three seats in the next one.) Fred, Elizabeth, and Harry all pointed out that their boarding passes assigned them to the window, and they took their seats happily.
I was sitting right in the middle of the five seats with Hermione on one side and Brittany on the other.
I bet you're wondering something. At one point in this story so far, you've probably thought, Doesn't having two Brittanys with two different spellings ever get confusing? Well, if you know us, no. We look completely different. I'm kind of tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Brittany's kind of short with brown hair and brown eyes. If you don't know us, however, I suppose it could get confusing at some point, but not really. After all, our names are spelled differently, and our personalities are somewhat different. You haven't been getting confused, have you?
Anyways…
Every single one of the guys who was with us on this flight, plus Ginny, had never been on an airplane before. That included Harry, who, even though he was raised by Muggles, had never been on an airplane before due to reasons beyond his control. (Grrr.) Hermione had traveled by plane many times before and was just as bored as the rest of us.
I guess there must be something super-fascinating about airplanes, though. The Weasleys and Harry actually paid attention to the flight attendant in front of the cabin. You know the one. They're the kind that stand in front of everyone and demonstrates what to do in an emergency, how to buckle your seatbelt, and all that stuff that everybody already knows. (Well, almost everybody.)
It was a good thing that Mr. Weasley wasn't there. He would have been having a field day. Horrible airplane food, barf bags, those little yellow plastic cup things that you're supposed to use if there's "a decrease in cabin pressure"…it's a Muggle-fan's dream come true.
When the flight attendant finally sat down and Ron got over the surprise of being able to use seat cushions as floatation devices, the plane finally started moving. It rolled along very slowly until it reached the run-way.
The plane had barely begun to speed-up when Lori suddenly exclaimed, "Oh!"
"'Oh' what?" I asked.
"This is such a perfect opportunity for a picture!" said Lori excitedly.
"What are you talking about?" I said incredulously. "We're in the middle of the run-way. We're about to take off!"
"I know!" Lori giggled. She unbuckled her seat-belt and hopped out of her seat.
"What are you doing?!" Denise exclaimed.
"I'm taking a picture, what else?" answered Lori.
The plane was going full-speed now. We'd be taking off any second. And here was Lori…taking a picture.
"Lori, get back in your seat!" said Hermione. "We're about to lift off the ground and the seat-belt sign is still on. You're going to get us in trouble!"
"I am not," said Lori.
"Sit down!!!" we all exclaimed.
"If you're so concerned about it, why don't you just let me take the picture really quick and then I'll sit down, okay?" She raised the camera to her eye. "Smile!"
"Ma'am, what are you doing back there?!" someone exclaimed. Uh-oh. Lori had been seen.
"I'll sit back down in a sec, don't worry!" Lori called back. "Hold still, everyone."
The steward that had seen her came over. "Ma'am, you have to sit down or we'll have to stop the plane. Sit down."
"Hold on! I've almost got it…" pleaded Lori. The plane was shaking so much that she couldn't steady the camera.
The steward got red in the face and hurried to the front of the plane. We soon felt the entire plane slowing down, until it finally came to a halt.
"Lori, you've stopped the plane!" said Fred.
"Uh, sorry," said Lori, looking sheepish. Then, before anyone could do anything, she finally snapped the picture.
To make a long story short, we eventually left London. The whole plane had to circle around and start over again, of course, but we made it. The last remark I heard before the plane took off was from Brittany.
"Lori," she said between clenched teeth, "if anything like that happens again, I swear I'll break your camera."
By the time we made it to New York City, it was 6:00 a.m. (I could be wrong. I don't know Time Zones.) We were all feeling very, very jet-lagged. We had a two-hour wait, however, so we had to find something to do.
The first thing we did was find this really big window that looked out over the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center. We all saluted and paid our respects because of the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11 (sniff, sniff).
Then we realized that we were starving. None of us had had anything to eat before we left for the airport, and the "breakfast" they had served us during the flight was not fit for human consumption. Therefore, we all stopped at this little café-coffee shop-type place and had a real New York breakfast. (Yummy!)
It finally dawned on us that we would have to find a place to change our Wizard money into customary US dollars. We went and found a long line of Currency Exchange Stations with a bunch of tellers changing money. Harry started to walk into the line that was closest to us.
"Wait Harry! Wrong line," said Lori.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "The sign says 'Currency Exchange Station.'"
"We have to find the special station," said Elizabeth.
"Huh?" said Harry, clearly confused. Everybody else who did not know what we meant looked the same way. (Including Hermione, of all people.)
We American-born people dragged the Weasleys and Harry and Hermione over to a different station. When we got to the front of the line we all handed over most of the Wizard money we had with us. The teller was busy changing our Galleons into dollars when Harry asked, "Exactly what is so special about this line?"
"See the little black cat pin the guy's wearing?" said Elizabeth, pointing.
"Yeah, so?"
"That means he's a wizard," Elizabeth continued. "He's the only one who'll accept Wizard money as a legal form of currency."
"Yeah, you'll have to watch for that while you're in America," I said.
Click! A picture of the wizard teller. (He gave us the weirdest look.)
After that we still had about an hour to kill. We walked around and looked at gift shops and stuff. Elizabeth and Ginny had us all stop at a local newsstand so that they could by magazines. Even though everybody had everybody else to talk to, they seemed to think that reading material was necessary.
We lolled around for awhile until we heard our flight being announced over the loud-speaker. (Thankfully, we were not late this time. If we had somehow managed to almost miss the flight while we were strolling around in the airport, I would seriously consider ourselves cursed.)
Our flight was much more interesting this time. Once again, we argued over who got the window seats (this time it was Ron, Carolyn, and Lori). Once again, we disturbed the flight attendants as well as our fellow passengers.
Click! A picture of us in the second plane.
We even got to watch a movie. Our other flight had showed a movie, too. However, it was this really, really old foreign flick in a totally different language, complete with subtitles. This flight showed Forrest Gump. All twelve of us sat in complete silence during the entire movie. (Gotta love it!)
I almost had a spasm of excitement when our plane finally began to descend over Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. True, I'd never been to Arizona in my entire life, but I knew it'd still be fun. We were going to be staying at Lori's home (Brittany's mom was visiting her family in California) and we were supposed to meet up with some of Brittany and Lori's friends that they have not seen in, like, forever.
I was practically skipping as I left the plane. The twelve of us had made it through two whole flights alive and in one piece. I decided to take that as a very, very good omen. We had finally left our really cramped airplane seats behind, and now there was plenty of space for us to move around comfortably. We could be as crazy and uncivilized as we wanted and we wouldn't have to worry about any stupid passengers complaining about us and stupid flight attendants yelling at us.
Um, I'm not exactly sure how to end my first part in the retelling of this summer vacation, so I'll just pass it on to the next person…
Okay Lori, your turn! ^_^
Brittny
'How hard could it be?' I can't believe Care actually said that. I'm going to tell the truth here: Our trip was not very easy at all. I mean, just flying into the U.S. was pretty traumatizing. (There's your first clue.)
Where did Care leave off? Oh yeah – we were all singing. And we were talking. We made a ton of noise all the way to the airport. We were all in pretty good spirits until it came time to park. Why?
We got lost.
Mr. Weasley had absolutely no idea where he was going, and neither did the rest of us. We must have circled around the entire airport, like, six times. Did we ever think of stopping and asking someone? Of course not. That would be the intelligent thing to do. We were all becoming really frustrated, which pretty much blocked our ability to think straight. So we just circled, and circled, and circled. (Click! A picture of us driving pointlessly around the airport.)
By the time we found a parking space we were running really, really late. Our flight was going to take-off in an hour and we still had to check in, check our bags, and go through security checkpoints.
Thank God for luggage carts. Without them, I seriously think we would have missed the plane. We each rented one and loaded our trunks onto them. Then we hurried off to the Check-In stations.
We were so late that there was almost nobody waiting in our line. We grabbed our boarding passes and gave our trunks to the Sky Cab (who almost fell over when he tried to lift all of them). All we had to do now was get past security and we'd be home free!
Unfortunately, the lines for the security checkpoints were super long. There was no cutting-corners this time, however. All we could do is stand in line, wait, and hope that we didn't miss our plane.
We were three-fourths of the way through the line when we heard a beep come over the loud-speaker. "Flight 6052 from London to New York City is now boarding. Repeat: Flight 6052 from London to New York City is now boarding."
"That's our flight!" I shrieked. "We're going to miss it! Quick, somebody fake a heart attack!"
"A heart attack?" said Hermione. "What good will that do? They'll just send over the paramedics."
"Yes, but at least we'll have an excuse to cut in front of this line!" I wailed.
"Now, now, Brittny, calm down. Everything will be fine," said Mr. Weasley, though from the expression on his face it was clear that he wasn't sure it was going to be fine at all.
Lori, who had nothing better to do, snapped a picture of all of us. I was so tense I felt like strangling her. (I saw the picture later, and believe me; I have never seen a more anxious-looking group of people in my entire life.)
We finally made it to the head of the line and got past security (which was a real miracle, since the security has been tightened since September 11). I managed to find a clock in one of the little restaurants. We had exactly twenty minutes to get to our gate. There was only one thing to do: Run.
Normally, I absolutely hate running. I especially hated running in gym class when I used to attend a Muggle school. I had no idea that all of that running would prepare me for the race of a lifetime; my friends and me against time. (Wow, that sounds really deep, doesn't it?) We practically flew past people, snack bars, and gift shops with over-priced items. Now that I think about it, we must have looked a lot like the family from those Home Alone movies.
And guess what? We made it! We had a few minutes to get settled into the plane before it left the airport.
Everybody hugged Mr. Weasley good-bye and boarded the plane. (We were flying on America West airlines, in case you're curious.) It was one of those huge planes with two seats on the left, and aisle, five seats in the middle, another aisle, and then two seats on the right. Our seats were in the very back of the plane because we'd been so late.
Despite the fact that we had a very limited amount of time to get into our seats, we all began to argue over who got the three window seats. (We took up one whole row and three seats in the next one.) Fred, Elizabeth, and Harry all pointed out that their boarding passes assigned them to the window, and they took their seats happily.
I was sitting right in the middle of the five seats with Hermione on one side and Brittany on the other.
I bet you're wondering something. At one point in this story so far, you've probably thought, Doesn't having two Brittanys with two different spellings ever get confusing? Well, if you know us, no. We look completely different. I'm kind of tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Brittany's kind of short with brown hair and brown eyes. If you don't know us, however, I suppose it could get confusing at some point, but not really. After all, our names are spelled differently, and our personalities are somewhat different. You haven't been getting confused, have you?
Anyways…
Every single one of the guys who was with us on this flight, plus Ginny, had never been on an airplane before. That included Harry, who, even though he was raised by Muggles, had never been on an airplane before due to reasons beyond his control. (Grrr.) Hermione had traveled by plane many times before and was just as bored as the rest of us.
I guess there must be something super-fascinating about airplanes, though. The Weasleys and Harry actually paid attention to the flight attendant in front of the cabin. You know the one. They're the kind that stand in front of everyone and demonstrates what to do in an emergency, how to buckle your seatbelt, and all that stuff that everybody already knows. (Well, almost everybody.)
It was a good thing that Mr. Weasley wasn't there. He would have been having a field day. Horrible airplane food, barf bags, those little yellow plastic cup things that you're supposed to use if there's "a decrease in cabin pressure"…it's a Muggle-fan's dream come true.
When the flight attendant finally sat down and Ron got over the surprise of being able to use seat cushions as floatation devices, the plane finally started moving. It rolled along very slowly until it reached the run-way.
The plane had barely begun to speed-up when Lori suddenly exclaimed, "Oh!"
"'Oh' what?" I asked.
"This is such a perfect opportunity for a picture!" said Lori excitedly.
"What are you talking about?" I said incredulously. "We're in the middle of the run-way. We're about to take off!"
"I know!" Lori giggled. She unbuckled her seat-belt and hopped out of her seat.
"What are you doing?!" Denise exclaimed.
"I'm taking a picture, what else?" answered Lori.
The plane was going full-speed now. We'd be taking off any second. And here was Lori…taking a picture.
"Lori, get back in your seat!" said Hermione. "We're about to lift off the ground and the seat-belt sign is still on. You're going to get us in trouble!"
"I am not," said Lori.
"Sit down!!!" we all exclaimed.
"If you're so concerned about it, why don't you just let me take the picture really quick and then I'll sit down, okay?" She raised the camera to her eye. "Smile!"
"Ma'am, what are you doing back there?!" someone exclaimed. Uh-oh. Lori had been seen.
"I'll sit back down in a sec, don't worry!" Lori called back. "Hold still, everyone."
The steward that had seen her came over. "Ma'am, you have to sit down or we'll have to stop the plane. Sit down."
"Hold on! I've almost got it…" pleaded Lori. The plane was shaking so much that she couldn't steady the camera.
The steward got red in the face and hurried to the front of the plane. We soon felt the entire plane slowing down, until it finally came to a halt.
"Lori, you've stopped the plane!" said Fred.
"Uh, sorry," said Lori, looking sheepish. Then, before anyone could do anything, she finally snapped the picture.
To make a long story short, we eventually left London. The whole plane had to circle around and start over again, of course, but we made it. The last remark I heard before the plane took off was from Brittany.
"Lori," she said between clenched teeth, "if anything like that happens again, I swear I'll break your camera."
By the time we made it to New York City, it was 6:00 a.m. (I could be wrong. I don't know Time Zones.) We were all feeling very, very jet-lagged. We had a two-hour wait, however, so we had to find something to do.
The first thing we did was find this really big window that looked out over the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center. We all saluted and paid our respects because of the terrorist attacks that happened on September 11 (sniff, sniff).
Then we realized that we were starving. None of us had had anything to eat before we left for the airport, and the "breakfast" they had served us during the flight was not fit for human consumption. Therefore, we all stopped at this little café-coffee shop-type place and had a real New York breakfast. (Yummy!)
It finally dawned on us that we would have to find a place to change our Wizard money into customary US dollars. We went and found a long line of Currency Exchange Stations with a bunch of tellers changing money. Harry started to walk into the line that was closest to us.
"Wait Harry! Wrong line," said Lori.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "The sign says 'Currency Exchange Station.'"
"We have to find the special station," said Elizabeth.
"Huh?" said Harry, clearly confused. Everybody else who did not know what we meant looked the same way. (Including Hermione, of all people.)
We American-born people dragged the Weasleys and Harry and Hermione over to a different station. When we got to the front of the line we all handed over most of the Wizard money we had with us. The teller was busy changing our Galleons into dollars when Harry asked, "Exactly what is so special about this line?"
"See the little black cat pin the guy's wearing?" said Elizabeth, pointing.
"Yeah, so?"
"That means he's a wizard," Elizabeth continued. "He's the only one who'll accept Wizard money as a legal form of currency."
"Yeah, you'll have to watch for that while you're in America," I said.
Click! A picture of the wizard teller. (He gave us the weirdest look.)
After that we still had about an hour to kill. We walked around and looked at gift shops and stuff. Elizabeth and Ginny had us all stop at a local newsstand so that they could by magazines. Even though everybody had everybody else to talk to, they seemed to think that reading material was necessary.
We lolled around for awhile until we heard our flight being announced over the loud-speaker. (Thankfully, we were not late this time. If we had somehow managed to almost miss the flight while we were strolling around in the airport, I would seriously consider ourselves cursed.)
Our flight was much more interesting this time. Once again, we argued over who got the window seats (this time it was Ron, Carolyn, and Lori). Once again, we disturbed the flight attendants as well as our fellow passengers.
Click! A picture of us in the second plane.
We even got to watch a movie. Our other flight had showed a movie, too. However, it was this really, really old foreign flick in a totally different language, complete with subtitles. This flight showed Forrest Gump. All twelve of us sat in complete silence during the entire movie. (Gotta love it!)
I almost had a spasm of excitement when our plane finally began to descend over Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, Arizona. True, I'd never been to Arizona in my entire life, but I knew it'd still be fun. We were going to be staying at Lori's home (Brittany's mom was visiting her family in California) and we were supposed to meet up with some of Brittany and Lori's friends that they have not seen in, like, forever.
I was practically skipping as I left the plane. The twelve of us had made it through two whole flights alive and in one piece. I decided to take that as a very, very good omen. We had finally left our really cramped airplane seats behind, and now there was plenty of space for us to move around comfortably. We could be as crazy and uncivilized as we wanted and we wouldn't have to worry about any stupid passengers complaining about us and stupid flight attendants yelling at us.
Um, I'm not exactly sure how to end my first part in the retelling of this summer vacation, so I'll just pass it on to the next person…
Okay Lori, your turn! ^_^