MY WEEKEND

This past weekend was a very happy personal one for me. It was one of celebration spent with my family and with some of their close personal friends. It was also one in which very few have the blessing of participating in the Bar Mitzvah of a Great Grandson.

This weekend was also remarkable because instead of the mountain (family) coming to the Patriarch (me), the Patriarch went to one of the foothills.

Casey Patterson was the magnet that drew me to a small community about as far from Columbus Ohio as Plainfield is from New York.

The logistics seemed foreboding, since a peripheral neuritis (lack of feeling) in the feet makes walking any distance very difficult and exhausting. Today’s trek through not only the size of the airports but also the security and boarding procedures has discouraged me from travelling for the past decade.

Fortunately my son and daughter-in-law came to the rescue and took care of all arrangements including wheeling me through two airports.

One problem we had to take into account was that the airplane service to Columbus was not by a standard size jet but in my case by a United Express regional airline contractor (Republic) who fly good size for turbo-prop planes.

Too often these planes load and unload not at a gate which can be lowered to their door, but by self-contained steps from the apron. At Newark the plane was accessed from a gate at the far end of a long concourse. The problem at Newark was that the plane came in from Greensboro NC and had been held up 3 ½ hours there.

However, at Columbus on the way back although the flight was on time and although the assigned gate at that airport could be used; about 40 minutes before loading a small jet for Chicago was urgently assigned that gate since others were unavailable.

The gate my flight was now leaving from was not functioning so the plane loaded on the apron.  The wheelchair driver assigned to me had to go back three gates to find a working elevator, and then has perhaps a 200 yard push over  multiple cable coils and  low curbs zig-zagging other  obstacles to the plane.  

Anyhow a good flight back and home at almost midnight Sunday. Monday has been a lost day catching up on sleep.

I plan to post an  inform blog about what is a Bar Mitzvah at about 9am Tuesday.