Preparations complete, and we're off !... sort of.

So, the bags have been packed, the shots have been taken, the pills have been choked down with a splash of Baileys in a goodbye toast with me pop, and it's time to go!
The first part of the trip was simple: just get to Washington Dulles IAD Airport to meet up with David, some time before our 8:30p.m. departure for Italy, then Addis Adaba, then Khartoum. Simple, ne? O ye of blissful ignorance of my dear mater, nothing involving travel is simple. I'll spare you the infamous story of Jana and the Untimely Death of Independence Air, and summarize in saying that my mother places a very high regard on adequate layover time.
As in, ten-plus hours.
Since our flight was due to leave at 8:30p.m., it was probably a good idea to be there at least two hours before. Maybe add a little more in case my Pittsburgh-IAD flight was delayed an hour or so. You figure, arriving around four, that's plenty of time and more.
Again. Ye of blissful ignorance of my mother's travel-doom-prediction-talents. Normally I book my own travel and she's none the wiser, but as she had offered to pay for the one-hour flight as a Christmas present, she was more than usually involved in the booking. Wise from lost battles years before, I didn't put up a fight, and agreed to arrive at Dulles Airport at the ripe early hour (still probably a little risky) of SIX FORTY FIVE A.M.
As one shocked friend put it : "You could drive to D.C... and BACK.. TWICE." Yes. I could. But this is not taking into account the sudden snowstorms, highway closures, lost baggage, flight cancellations, and hijacking attempts that my mother has planned for. So, she was happy, and I was early, and looked forward to spending about fourteen hours at Dulles Airport on Saturday, December 27th.

As ironic fate would have it, however, my mother was to be the proven victor (my just desserts for my renderings of her online), and I was to spend far far more than fourteen hours at Dulles International Airport that day. David was due to fly in at 5:30 p.m. - I know what my mom must have been thinking - that's only THREE hours in advance! Nowhere NEAR enough time! .. and she was right. U.S.Air officially failed at spectacular levels unforeseen by even the most hardened of travellers, and managed to get him to the airport at just about 8:30. So we could watch our plane fly away together. How nice.
I'll spare the reader the ensuing lost battles with U.S.Air and a variety of other airlines (and then hotels), as David and I desperately tried to find a way out of the country that day or the next. (If only he'd had a fourteen-hour layover too..)In dejected failure we retreated to the airport Hilton for the night, a step up or two from the hole-literally-in-wall joint he had planned for the trip's first night, in the Sudan. He warned me from the depths of one of the two plush, softly blanketed and doubly-mattressed beds, voice muffled by soft white pillows: "Don't get used to it, princess."
(I'll try not to.)