Mondo Stuck-In-Paris Update -or- “When the ash-hole spewed”
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 by Maryam Webster*** Update to the update 4/22: I’m going all the way home, to San Francisco on Saturday, 4/24, British Airways came thru with a last minute cancellation, called and booked me in. Wahoo! Leaving the rest as it was below though for posterity and export, to quote Bill Burroughs. 
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Here it is folks, selected highlights of being stuck as a traveller behind “The Grey Curtain”:
If you’ve been following the Paris Adventure Online, following me on Twitter or reading my updates on Facebook (pretty much the main places I’m posting while travelling) you know that like thousands of others, I’ve been stranded in Europe by the volcanic ash cloud.
And wait for it…this just in on April 21st: Heathrow now back open. Thank the Lord! Whose name apparently, is Adonis. Nope, I’m not kidding. Lord Adonis is the British Secretary of Transport in charge of such things.
The image at right was taken from BBC News on April 21 at 12:30pm Paris time. These travellers have been dossing down in the airport for almost a week, finally got boarding cards today, and are celebrating with champagne. I’m for a hot tub, massage and liberal application of chocolate, myself.
And then there were the inevitable gallows humor jokes that sprang up on Twitter and Facebook. One of the best I heard was “No, no Iceland…we said send us all your CASH. Regards, Europe”. Here’s a random selection of others from Britain’s Channel 4 News:
@hjortur: Sorry for the flight delays, Europe. We were aiming for London, but it’s hard to be accurate when firing a volcano .
@andylockran: ”Iceland goes bankrupt, then manages to set their island on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it”.
@pdacosta: “The last wish of the Icelandic economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe”.
@islandpastor: “Waiter, there’s volcanic ash in my soup”… Waiter: “I know, it’s a no-fly zone”
The Personal-Ash End Of Things
Like many others, I’ve been rebooked – five times at this point. Like others, had cases packed & was literally in taxi ready to go when I fortunately got emergency call from British Airways not to come to airport. This was the only time btw (and the third time I was rebooked) that BA notifications worked.
BA was helpful as possible but would absolutely not book me on a flight to San Francisco. I was offered any place else in Europe, when the cloud lifted, but no place in North America.
Like many others, I was reduced to begging. They’d heard it all before and while sympathetic, were not going to offer me a refund so I could book another airline that *was* flying.
“I’ll take anything to the American continent – Canada, Mexico, Peru – you go to Peru, I can see a British Airways flight to Lima from Madrid – how about that? I can get to Madrid on the train….bus…donkey cart. Anything!”
Finally, after I squeaked my wheel loud and hard enough, and made an absolute pest of myself by calling every fifteen minutes: “Ms Webster, I see this is the ninth time you’ve contacted us today, let’s see what we can do to get you home” – that’s the ticket folks! I was offered a flight out this Saturday the 24th to Phoenix, AZ. I took it and resumed praying the thing would go through.
We’re hearing that Katla, the second dormant Icelandic volcano and a bigger, nastier one (?!) is rumbling. My comment on the Facebook Ashcloud page was: “Now everybody, all together now: ‘Lullabye, and goodnight, and with roses bedight…’ Everyone keep singing ’til we all get home!”
Vagabond Coaches League & Rescue Tug
Molly (@shaboom) Gordon tweeted me that Michael Bungay (@boxofcrayons) Stanier was similarly stuck in Amsterdam. I joked with him over Twitter that we should call ourselves the “Vagabond Coaches League”, rent a tugboat and chug around European ports of call picking up stranded coaches and ferry the lot of us back home.
It would be just like Thomas Leonard’s Y2K RV trip across America to promote coaching. We could party the night away, film the whole thing and sell book, DVDs and t-shirts as a product. It’d be a gas, gas, gas! (but no ash). Here’s our official t-shirt. Feel free to put this on your site if you’re a coach and were stranded by the ash.
Although as to coaching, there were several opportunities for that. Group of British women tourists openly weeping in a cafe at hearing their flight was (yet-again) cancelled. When they said I could help I taught them EFT as in such situations people like to do anything to be proactive and EFT is one of the most active of the energy therapies.
We tapped and when that took the edge off, I taught them ETHOS to take them all the way into consciousness around the fact that they were safe, well fed and had a place to stay until they could get home. This is something I too am giving thanks for. They loved ETHOS and one said felt like stepping into her massage therapist’s office – it calmed her immediately. I left them with these two tools, the internet sites for more info and went off to see a museum I hadn’t gotten to see yet.
I’m good – I have a place to stay until Friday and then will do a hotel room for one night. Hopefully the shuttle I’d booked will take me to the airport rea-a-a-ally early as the flight is at gawdawful o’clock in the morning…
Short-Term Panic, Emotional Immunity & Other Biscuitry
While people were frantic to get back to their homes, we heard of fighting on trains and busses, bloodied noses on the Eurostar and a riot in Madrid. It was a relief to receive an email from ETHOS In Paris workshop participants, Anne & Jerome, saying they’d made it back to the UK with their children safely. On the whole however, I believe it’s been a time of great cameraderie, gallows humor and all.
Several older Brits I heard in cafes hearked back to the days of rationing during and after World War II.
“Ay-up lass,” one said to me philosophically “we’re all in it together. There’s nowt any one of us can do ’til that buggerin’ ash-hole’s done spewin’ its filth. Best sit tight and have another cuppa.” Rational wisdom from the mouth of a wizened Yorkshireman* old enough to be my grandpa, yet spry as a spring chicken and loaded down with Parisian goodies for his “young’uns”.
When the times get tough, the tough apparently go shopping.
But on the other paw, like many in private moments, I was caught in the grip of short-term panic and negative emotions. “Oh no, what if I never get home! What if that damned mountain spews for a year like it did in the 1800’s!”. Cue tears, railing at the universe in general and feeling sorry for myself in specific.
The worst was the feeling of stark loneliness when I was on the phone for hours with British Airways in the re-re-re-re-re-booking of my flights time after time. The toll that the stress of “not knowing” took was tremendous and had me falling into bed early, too exhausted to go out.
I wailed on the phone to my ever-patient husband who was doing his best to cope and was upset in his own right. I cried on the shoulders of friends while simultaneously trying not to. I was evil to a neighbor who snorted “Merde, l’Americaine!” for the tenth time to my face. He subsided in shock and hasn’t squeaked a word to me since. In short, I had a “little kitty fit” as we call it, when one of the cats throws a tantrum.
Once it was over, I set about employing the energy tools I had in my arsenal to shore up my Emotional Immunity. This is something I’ll be writing about more in the future, but the basis is the AM Energizers & PM Harmonizer exercises from my Everyday Bliss For Busy Women book.
How’s YOUR Emotional Immunity?
You can greatly increase it by simply tapping a round of EFT – with or without any intention or setup phrase behind it, and then doing an ETHOS set, ending up by stepping aside into Unlimited Self. When I do that, problems disappear like magic and the way is opened for me to do more productive things.
More productive like packing (done=done) and looking forward to my flight. In addition to getting home, it’s one of the best sleeps I’ve had on an airplane. British Airways is one of the few to offer full lie-down seats in Business class. Most seats that say they lie down flat only recline to within 30 degrees of flat so you’re at a kind of odd angle. I can actually stretch out in the BA sleeping pod and snooze almost as good as in bed at home. There’s a tv with on-demand movies, a plug for your laptop and peripherals and lockable storage drawer for same. You get a real sense of privacy and they provide earplugs and an eyeshade so the world goes away.
Somebody on Twitter asked about the food. They actually use china and silver service, with all the booze those who imbibe can hold. The kitchen is open through the journey with all the snacks and drinks you like and the flight attendants were some of the sweetest, even though they were in the middle of an industrial action when I flew. My halibut on the journey out was done to a turn and the veggies were crisp and good. How on earth do they do that aboard a plane?
I’m giving great thanks for all the many blessings this experience has been. Extra time with good friends, the ability to see myself rise to the occasion and surpass what I thought were my limits, increased love and expansiveness and…other things.
Will I make it back home this Saturday? Time will tell. And I’ll keep you updated.
Tune in next week for Maryam’s continuing adventures in: “Ash The World Turns”….
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Picture credit: The Yorkshire Man by Mick Cawston: http://www.corsini.co.uk/fineart/yorkshire-terrier-prints.shtml
Just a week! In just a week I’m going to be on a big jet plane bound for PARIS. Whee! Well, that’s if the British Airlines folks are done striking and will consent to honor my ticket and ferry me there. 
I haven’t packed and repacked my bags for Paris. I haven’t, as yet, even singled out which nighties, socks and skirts to take. My girlfriend Margie is scandalized by this, as to her the packing, repacking and re-repacking are a sacred ritual to be engaged in as a hedge against The Unforseen. Margie likes her trips just so, with few surprises and zero possibility of anything weird happening. People marvel that we’re friends but they do say opposites attract.
We had an amazing time Monday during the exact time of Winter Solstice, doing a ritual of clearing out the old, bringing in the desired and learning how each of our lives is sacred and how we are all priest/esses in our lives. I’m not using that as a religious term, but a spiritual one, for we are all here as teachers and students of each other.
An absolutely amazing video of French students doing stop-motion chair dance shows us a new Bliss Key: Cheerful Cooperation. When you engage this Bliss Key, the Bliss Blocker it unlocks is twofold:
Transparency, translucence, living a conscious life – or whatever you call it, is not only the birthright and destiny of every human, but also our responsibility to the future. Our choices are essential, each one important, even east or west, choosing paper, plastic or bring-your-own, choosing to remain conscious in the face of frightening and destructive acts of unspeakable evil, or parking a block away.
Moms especially will love this collection of f’ree downloadable organizer pages for your day, week, month and year. Three whole pages, about eighteen different forms in all to print and help organize the chaos of an active family! There’s a fall cleaning checklist, the “Eat Sheet” for a week’s worth of meals, a weekly family calendar, baby’s schedule, infant babysitter checklist and more. You don’t even have to sign up, just download:
I pledge to be more available to you in 2010. For one thing, I’ll be making lots of videos from now on. I’ve gone a bit video nutty really, as I’ve used my Flip Mino to exhaustion and happen to know Santa is dropping off a Kodak zi8.
Wassail is a contraction of the old Anglo-Saxon phrase “wes thu hal” meaning “To Your Health”. And of course, the traditional toasting beverage of this “best time of the year” ~ which in this case is a non-alcoholic hot apple cider punch we serve for the winter holidays. It is never served any other time of the year. You can twiddle the ingredients about a bit, Graines of Paradise may be hard to come by but you can substitute pink or green peppercorns or just leave it out.
I’ll be back to you just before New Year’s with some more juice for your joyous life and ways for you to live in ease, grace and joy.
Thank you as well to the officers of SFPD car 1257 who came, laughed at us just a wee bit (all in good fun, we were laughing too by that time – in the sheer terror of relief) and sprung us by summoning the California Pizza Kitchen manager who was still at work and had his own key.
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