We made it to Senegal

Friends,

It took heroic efforts, but we made it to Senegal - landing at 6:00am local time Friday (11:00pm Thursday night Chicago time). We have been breakfasting with the mission team and reviewing the upcoming work. It is now approaching noon Friday and some of us are pretty tired.

As you know, we stayed at a hotel near O'Hare on Thursday night. So did four others of our total of eight people. We woke at 4am to catch the 7:45 flight previously arranged. Upon getting to the airport (in about 2" of snow) the Delta ticket agent asked us why we had the strange itinerary that took us to LaGuardia through Atlanta when we could take a flight through Cincinnati and go direct to JFK. Of course, we said "no reason" and the agent changed us to the second plan. This was great because we could check our bags and not have to handle them again until we saw them in Africa.

However, the weather (and equipment) had other ideas. The snow continued and we had to have our plan de-iced prior to pushing away from the gate. Once out on the runway (about an hour late) we starting takeoff roll and suddenly the takeoff was aborted and we taxied off the runway. A cockpit indicator had reported that the wing edge de-icing heater system was faulty. This was examined for about an hour before we were moved to another plane and eventually left 3 hours after the original time. We made the connection in Cincinnati with only 15 minutes to spare and arrived in NY without further incident. Other than the usual arrival problems in Dakar with luggage, we had no other problems.

So, our outbound leg is complete! Now we deal with jet lag and orienting everyone to the situation here.

-- Tom