Saturday, April 17, 2010

On Volcanos and Travel Plans

Our airline tickets for Amsterdam are for Thursday, April 22nd, five days from now. The airports across Europe are still closed due to ash from the volcanic eruption in Iceland. The volcano continues to erupt. Oops. Our son, who is expecting us for this visit with his family, gave me the link to check Schiphol, the Netherlands airport directly for updates. As of five minutes ago, it says "Forecast: no air traffic will be possible to and from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol until further notice. Unfortunately we do not know at present when air traffic will be resumed."

Bummer.

I've heard that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. Well, excuse me, Sir, but did You happen to remember that I have Granddaughters over there? Excited Granddaughters? Little ones who don't understand things like volcanos far away that they can't see, and planes that won't fly when the sky is blue and clear? (Their daddy told me it was.)

Thousands of people are stranded at airports across Europe, while I sit here in my very comfortable home. Many people planned to leave this week and are already inconvenienced. I'm not worried yet. Really—I'm not. I'm praying, though.

2 comments:

sherrie said...

I sure have been thinking of you and how this will affect you. I hope it all works out! You and those granddaughters need all those hugs you've been saving up for each other :)

Patricia Stoltey said...

This is such an unbelievable event, and right when you were planning to travel. I assume the airlines will let you rebook when all this mess is over.

I keep remembering the radioactive cloud that circled the globe after Chernobyl, and I wonder how long this volcanic ash stuff will take to dissipate once the volcano stops. There could be some very long-lasting effects, I guess. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the volcano stops belching very soon.