April 14 - I made it to Dulles!

 Naturally since I was cautious and booked my pickup very early, we encountered only light traffic and I got here much too early.  (Better to wait than to stress over missing a flight, right?) The long TSA lines people encountered until recently were not in evidence and I zipped through the checks quickly.  As an aside, the TSA people I interacted with were uniformly friendly and smiling - no grouchy people here.  I did encounter my first glitch at the ticket counter though.  The agent, while very pleasant otherwise, refused to check my bags through to Lisbon.  That means I have to claim them at Heathrow and recheck them.  (Boo!)  I can't entirely blame him because my flights are on two separate tickets and he said they aren't allowed to do it.  (In the past they have done it but I guess something changed.)  Now as I mentioned in my last post I used BA miles for this trip and when I booked it, it wouldn't allow me to book what's called an open-jaw ticket either with miles or with money.  When I tried booking IAD to LIS (Lisbon) and home from London LHR it told me on the website that wasn't possible.  Well, I'll just have to deal with it.

I'm ensconced in the British Airways lounge and I will tell you it doesn't hold a candle to the United Polaris lounge here at Dulles.  I'll remember that in the future if I have to pass through Washington.  Still, this is better than sitting at a gate or paying for outrageously expensive airport food.

I can't complain too much though.  My day is much better than  a family I encountered on my way to this concourse.  The family included a couple of pre-teen kids and when they got off the train from the main terminal to the concourse one of the kids left a bag behind.  The train pulled away and lord only knows how they'll retrieve that.  On top of that they weren't English speakers; in fact they spoke some language which was completely foreign (no pun intended) to me - maybe Egyptian?  Anyway, I wished them luck.

So that's it for now.  Hopefully my changeover in Heathrow will go smoothly.  I have a little over four hours and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there are no snags.  Wish me well.