Cathy Church Super Course
August 4 through August 14, 2000
Sunset House – Grand Cayman
Candid and not so candid fun shots, complete with silly captions
Executive Summary – The photo course was fantastic. Cathy, Herb, Jon and the rest of the photo staff were stupendous. The photo course divemasters, Sam and Chris were also amazing. Sunset House was ok; not great, not bad. We learned a lot, shot a ton of pictures, and bought a bunch of stuff. We also got married. Life is indeed good.
Friday August 4 – Ooops, I forgot my C card
4 am came way too quickly that morning (as it likely does every morning, but we’re not up to see it). Our 6:15 US Scareways flight was leaving IAD to CLT (Charlotte), change planes then off to Grand Cayman, and our first photo course with Cathy Church. This was the "advanced" photo class. Advanced, likely because none of us have yet to be eaten by sea creatures in our illustrious photo careers. But advanced we were, and 13 people from various US locations were converging on this unsuspecting island in order to annoy its undersea inhabitants with lots of flashing, backscatter, fins flying, and all that fun stuff.
Our flights were remarkably uneventful (always a good thing when dealing with airline travel). We were put in a hold for weather in CLT, but since we had plenty of time to make our connection, no worries. GCM flight took off on time, was diverted for weather, and arrived a bit late, but certainly within a decent amount of time. On arrival at Sunset House we were greeted by the courteous staff, our room was in order, our paperwork completed, and then we were met by Herb.
Herb is a rather interesting character. It is clear that he knows his stuff and takes no prisoners. He made sure we were happy, and told us to come down to the photo shop after we got rid of some of the road cruft. That’s when I noticed that I’d forgotten my C cards. DOH! Herb phoned the desk. Ken, the sales manager, said he would take care of everything. He said that if I just got a copy of my nitrox certification, that would be enough to establish that I had been certified, since you can’t get a nitrox cert. without already having someone’s open water completed. He called IANTD and got an almost immediate fax back with all of my information. When we asked for the charges, he said nothing, since we were getting married on Thursday. What a sweetie.
Fax in hand, off to the dive shop where one of the divemasters was apparently having a bad day. He got rather annoyed at the fax, demanded an additional C card, and seemed quite unhappy when I asked him to call Ken who should straighten all of this out. Luckily, Ken did, the divemaster was satisfied, and we were blessed, given a locker to use, given 2 tanks, and sent on our merry way.
Our first dive of the trip was the very nice area outside of Sunset House. Shore diving can be quite relaxing and lots of fun. We saw many interesting creatures diving that afternoon. None of them are on film, however. We wanted to leave our cameras with Cathy and Herb to make sure everything would be ok with them.
Friday night we had dinner at the hotel restaurant the Sea Harvest. We ordered Indian food, chicken tikka masala and beef tandoori. Both were excellent.
Saturday August 5, 2000 – First Day of Class
Today was our first series of lectures, getting our equipment ready for tomorrow’s diving, and our first group dinner. We were given counter space, plastic bins, some supplies, and help when necessary. Turns out I needed help sooner rather than later, since it seems some water had somehow gotten into my strobe port, and left a white powdery ick there. After cleaning all of that out, thank goodness the TTL and the general strobe port were both functioning normally. After getting everything set and ready to go for the morning, we listened to lectures on how to cope with different conditions, how to create background changes, and a general review of things we were already supposed to know. Of course, most of us had forgotten a lot of photographic theory. Cathy made it all sound easy. Of course, anyone who has shot pictures underwater knows that it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’m sure as the week progresses, we’ll learn more and more about how to deal with "advanced" situations.
During the lecture, we were also introduced to each other. Our class included Dave, Ken from San Francisco, Don from Kentucky, another Don also known as "Deco Don" for reasons nobody would tell us, Debbie, Walt who had been on a bunch of trips with Cathy and Herb, and took wonderful pictures with his new F100 and housing, Steve and Jeff, two friends from California who were used to cold water, Jim who was the father of Jon, our housing expert and all around fun guy, Mike and Trish, Mike who liked shooting still pictures and Trish who liked video, and Charles. With the two of us, that made a total of 14. After the lecture, we watched a cool slide show and went off to get ready for dinner.
Dinner was at Casanova’s, a wonderful Italian Restaurant in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. It was amazingly good. The service was great, the food was excellent, and the company was lots of fun. We rode in with Don and Martha, a couple from Kentucky on their 40th wedding anniversary. Would that we live until our 40th anniversary J . After dinner, we were both exhausted and climbed into bed early and went right to sleep.
Sunday August 6, 2000 – Queen of the Fire Coral
Photo by Wes
This was the morning of our first dive of the photo class. We went off to the Balboa, a wreck in the harbor close to town. On the boat enroute, Cathy told us to make certain that if we saw an Indigo Hamlet that we tell Deco Don, since that was something he really wanted to take a picture of. I had no idea what an Indigo Hamlet was, but figured if I saw something kinda indigo that I would tell someone.
The way things worked on the boat was rather interesting. You leave the boat, check weighting, get your camera, shoot the roll, surface and Herb gets you new film and the divemasters get you new air or whatever else you need, and you drop back down and start shooting again. This goes on for three hours. Yes, three hours. While this sounds like a very long time, it is just about right for trying new and different photo techniques, including bracketing MANY pictures, and what Cathy calls "evolving" the picture. For me, this meant trying different shutter speeds for background changes, different angles, different strobe positions, etc. John showed me some great xmas tree worms to shoot, and then set up a French Angel for me to shoot from inside a porthole. This was great fun. Of course, at one point, Jon wanted to see what I was doing, and looked into the hole. That was one of my better porthole pictures J
Photo by Wes
Later in the dive, while trying to position myself for Wes to take some pictures, my leg brushed against part of the ship’s hull. Immediate stinging pain accompanied by a large red blister rose up on my left thigh. While dealing with that, my arms brushed up against another part of the hull. Pain again. Guess what? It was fire coral. I had my first encounter with the evil stuff. Repeat after me: I will not ever dive without a full length suit again. I was wearing a shorty. This was a very bad idea. Since there wasn’t too much I could do about it right then, on with the dive.
Many of the fish we have encountered are used to photographers and don’t have much problem being "positioned." The first day, I went through 4 rolls of film shooting the fish and other creatures. I also went through many of the goodies they brought for us on the boat. I must say that the provisions for the class are wonderful. We had fresh fruit, chocolate, cookies, candy bars, and tons of sodas. After three hours worth of diving, it was wonderful to have all that great stuff there. Our divemasters, Chris and Sam were fantastic. They fetched our towels, brought us food, hauled our BCDs and regs out of the water for air changes, shuttled our cameras back to Herb for film changes, and took really great care of us. By the time we got back from the Balboa, it was looking really nasty outside. Luckily for us, the dive ended and the boat returned before the skies opened up and it poured with rain. Unluckily for Deco Don, nobody saw an Indigo Hamlet.
This afternoon’s rain was quite interesting. We had two major league downpours. The wind kicked up. Rain was coming down in sheets. Luckily, we had our leftovers from the night before’s wonderful dinner for lunch. We didn’t have to physically go anywhere in the rain to eat. After we ate, we made it through the rain for the next lecture.
This afternoon’s lecture was on dual strobe technique. This was what I was really in need of. Most of my pictures have been pretty flat with either too deep shadows or not enough texture. Occasionally, I’d get that one or two that I really liked from a roll. Now was the time to find out how to achieve more consistency. This will be put into practice for tomorrow’s dive. Class let out at about 5:30, we played with our equipment to get things ready to go, and then went back to the room to rest. Monday morning we will get to see our first efforts, and have our photos critiqued by Cathy as to what we need to work on for the next dive.
Monday August 7, 2000 – The Amazing Barfing Boat Strikes Back
The morning dawned bright and early and by 7 we were at the photo center waiting to see our first day’s stuff. The "line" for critiques began at 6:30, and by the time we showed up, we were number 11 and 12 out of 14 to be critiqued. I guess that means we should either get up earlier, or sleep a bit later. We aren’t sure which would be more appropriate. In any case, our film from the day before was waiting for us. Wes had been complaining that he didn’t think he had done very well, but imagine his surprise when he found some great pictures on his bench. His stuff looked absolutely great. Some of mine was pretty good as well. Not great, mind you, but pretty good. Cathy pointed out a few she liked, and gave me several good lighting pointers to try next time. Of course, next time would come very quickly, since we were out at 10 am on the boat ride to a wall dive.
This morning, I had decided to shoot wide angle. Our first stop was Orange Canyon. The waves were about 2 feet. 2 feet, to me, is like 8 feet to normal humankind. I was not feeling very well once we got there. I had to listen to the briefing from the water (my favorite spot for dive briefings, by the way.) Unfortunately, the current was pretty nasty. More unfortunately, it seems I inadvertently locked my lens aperture down, causing me to be unable to change F stops on this dive. So, I swam around, looked at some things to shoot next time, and came up rather early. Early for me is bad, so I sat in the middle of the boat trying to avoid seasickness. Cathy told me to close my eyes, which helped a lot. I put a towel over my head and just sat there for the long surface interval and trip to our next stop, Aquarium. By the time we got to Aquarium, John had diagnosed my camera problem and fixed it so that I would be able to dive with a functional 18 mm lens and dome port. Aquarium was going to be a long dive, so I thought that perhaps I wouldn’t be shooting so much film, since I had tons of time to set up shots and get the lighting just right. Wrong. I shot another 3 rolls.
The first few shots were of sponges I tried to light correctly, including some pretty blue ones. Then I wandered around trying to find interesting compositional pieces and light them correctly. This would be most difficult, but since this was what I mainly wanted to work on, I worked rather hard at it. The proof will be in the pudding, as it were. John helped me position strobes on one group of sponges and coral. The staff always seems to know the right place to aim things. Later on, Cathy came by and helped me set up a few more shots with different creatures, including a French Angel who seemed eager to please his audience. After a tank and film change, I was cruising along and came upon a mirror. Cathy had brought a few props for us to use for reflectors, etc., and this mirror was sitting there on the ground, when a parrot fish saw it and decided it must be a mortal enemy and began attacking. Another parrot fish followed suit. A few confused grouper came by, looking into the mirror. The kind of interest this mirror was creating was rather amazing. Cathy came by in a bit and repositioned the mirror, and we got a few more unsuspecting self-admirers on film. Now, if only things come out tomorrow…. Again, nobody saw an Indigo Hamlet.
6pm we met with Noel Johnson, who was to be our marriage officer on Thursday. Unfortunately, he was VERY Christian, and insisted that the wedding be Christian. Since I don’t believe that way, it was difficult to listen to Noel’s version of the creation story, and how god meant for us to be together, but it seemed that at this late date we would have very little choice. Get married Christian on Thursday, or don’t get married at all in the Caymans. We chose the "get married" part. I had met Wes the year before at Coconut Harbor, the hotel right next door to this one. Our first dive together had been Devil’s Grotto on Grand Cayman. It seemed appropriate that we get married here as well. It wouldn’t do us any harm to listen to Mr. Johnson tell us about his version of god, and all the rest of it. We paid our fees, filled out our forms, and Mr. Johnson left after a few more stories about his family and the bible. He was a genuinely nice man who seemed to care about the people he was joining together. We decided to get married at the airport, since both of us are pilots (Wes being a student pilot) . It may be interesting to find out what others will think when we tell them of the venue, but what place is more appropriate than the place where you enter and exit the country. All of our trips to the Cayman Islands began and ended in that place. It seemed highly fitting.
Tuesday August 8, 2000 – I put the strobes WHERE?
The morning’s pictures were rather amusing as well as disappointing. I had no idea that my 18 mm lens shot an area greater than the view in my viewfinder. I also had no idea that wide angle strobe placement had to be SO far back. I had many shots with the strobe and/or the strobe arms in the right hand side of the picture. Oh well. Some of them made rather interesting lighting effects anyway. Learn something new every day. After seeing these pictures, I decided if I really want to learn how to shoot wide angle, I’m just going to have to keep trying.
La Mesa is a very interesting divesite that looks much like a "mesa" in the West. It had an overhang under which some wonderful sponges, corals, creatures, and fish lived. It had beautiful red sponges, blue vase sponges, blennies, and other fun things. The mirrors were back up, and a Queen Angel was attracted to them, posing for the camera and looking quite happy. Elsewhere, Cathy pointed out an interesting scene I hadn’t noticed prior, and helped me set up my strobe arms once I’d chosen the shot. Later on, I found a few scenes of my own that I set up. It felt like I was getting the hang of it. Still no Indigo Hamlet, however.
Tuesday night Cathy and Herb took the class to dinner at Lone Star. Don and Martha gave us a ride over there again, and we drank far too many marguerites. The fajitas were quite good also. Exhausted, we climbed into bed for a not long enough sleep.
Wednesday August 9, 2000 – Smaller can be better
I was very happy with the results of Tuesday’s film from La Mesa. I was indeed figuring out how to do wide angle photography at long last. Today I decided to go to macro, since we were going to stay shallow and wouldn’t be doing a wall. That was because we had a night dive scheduled for that night where we could redo some of the shots we had done from day one.
Today was a review of dual strobe macro technique, using lighting tips Cathy had given us in lectures. It was great fun finding little creatures to shoot. Cathy and Herb fed us lunch, and it seemed that in no time we were heading out for the night dive. We had to leave early for the dive so that we could get mooring on the Balboa, it being a very popular divesite. We then found ourselves with very little to do, sitting on the boat waiting for it to get dark. Sam told us the "story of the Balboa" and how it sunk in the early 1950s, dumping enough rice to feed the reef for a long time, and enough wood to build quite a few buildings in town. Although entertaining, Sam’s story didn’t last long enough for darkness to have descended yet. We bugged Jon to tell us stories, but he didn’t have any good ones. Perhaps next class he will have lots of silly stories about the supposedly "advanced" class and all the silly things that we did.
My big hope for the night dive was to see squid and maybe an octopus. I felt very lucky that night to have seen both. The octopus got away quickly after I’d only taken two shots of him. The two squid made it very difficult to focus on them by swimming up towards the black sky. Only one shot actually was in focus. Luckily, it was a good one, so I can’t complain too much. At night, it would have been difficult to find an Indigo Hamlet even if I knew what one was J
Thursday August 10, 2000 – You want to do WHAT? WHERE?
Thursday morning was very hectic for us. We had to review our slides from Wednesday, get ready for the dives, and then get ready for our wedding. Needless to say, we had quite a bit on our minds. The morning dive was Northwest Point, a beautiful place for both macro and wide angle shots. It was a wall dive, which meant we would be going deep, then going to another dive site for more shallow work later. I was doing wide angle, so each shot took quite some time to set up. Unfortunately for me, with so much on my mind, I didn’t pay enough attention to my SPG on my air integrated computer. I had worked my way up to 60 feet by that time, and when I did look, my air time was 0, and my PSI was flashing 0. This meant I had about 95 PSI in the tank. I was not in a position to get to the hang bar and use the tank on the boat. I looked around for anyone with an octopus, but everyone was too far away from me. This was common on photo shoots, with people doing many different things. My air computer errored out, putting me into deco just after I noticed the SPG. Luckily, I was on nitrox, so I was still ok, but getting way too close for comfort. I ascended way too quickly for my computer with the tank getting very difficult to breathe from. I made it to the boat, and was quite shaken by the experience.
I learned something very valuable from this experience. Cathy had made it a point to note that while doing underwater photography, your first most important consideration was for your own personal safety. It is far too easy to get caught up in a scene or in an animal you are photographing, and not pay attention to your own air, depth, etc. It is obvious how dangerous that can become. Needless to say, things changed dramatically in my profiles and in my attention to all parts of what I was doing. When I got back on the boat, I checked very carefully to note what I could do on the next dive, how long a surface interval I needed, etc., and double checked all of it with Wes to make sure that all would be well below any tissue saturation estimates. I stayed out of the water longer, dove much more shallow, and came up with plenty of air to do much longer safety stops. I have also set different audible alarms on my computers to alert me to situations much earlier. I tried to set an Indigo Hamlet alarm, but was unable to.
After the two shallow dives, it was back to the Photo Center for a short lecture, "rewind, rewind, rewind" and to get our equipment ready for the next day. After that, it was off to get dressed for the wedding. The CAA (Cayman Aviation Authority) had nixed our idea of getting married on the runway. Island Air had nixed our idea of chartering one of their planes for some flights around the island. There were no aircraft for rental anywhere on Grand Cayman (surprisingly enough). So, it was off to the viewing gallery where we were married overlooking a British Airways 767, a Cayman Airways 737, and a big ole C-130 from the USAF. It was a very nice ceremony, with John and Deane Ware as witnesses, and our animated but strange marriage officer, Noel Johnson, telling everyone about his former lives as Postmaster General, and his brother the finance officer who was knighted. He certainly had an interesting life. After we signed our lives away, it was off to Casanovas for dinner where some nasty person alerted the waiters to our new "condition" and they did the dancing tambourine bashing singing Italian thing at us. I ordered spaghetti carbonara even though it wasn’t on the menu, and was very pleasantly surprised with the best spaghetti carbonara I’d ever had, including the stuff from Boston’s North End. It was an amazing night. We went home not looking forward to the hangovers we would have the next morning.
Friday August 11, 2000 – Melts in your mouth, not on your boat
Photo By Wes
Back to La Mesa on Friday morning. This time I decided to shoot macro and see how things went that way. I’d already done one day of wide angle there, so the macro was a good event. As usual, lots of little creatures appeared including a juvenile spotted drum, a scorpion fish, numerous blennies, and even a golden tail eel. I finally got to see one, up close and personal. Of course I shot a lot of film at him. Our divemasters decided to take turns wearing a bright orange M & M’s costume, including silly hands, silly shoe covers, and a big white "M" on the front of a circular suit. Chris even decided to go diving in it. I wondered what these two would be like on a "normal" class. Neither Chris, nor anyone else found an Indigo Hamlet.
Lunch was Subway sandwiches today, of course supplied by Cathy. They were actually quite good and we were energized to choose our "five best" slides for the graduation slide show. It was going to be VERY difficult for me to choose five slides out of all the ones that I liked. Maybe it was only my ego talking, but I like a lot of the things that I’d shot. Especially after I had thrown out all the rejects. That was a rather large pile J .
Friday night we drove into town with John and Deane and had dinner at the Thai restaurant, Thai Orchid near the Sleep Inn. The food was great.
Saturday August 12, 2000– Attack of the Killer Moray
Our first dive on Saturday was off to Orange Canyon again. This time, I chose to shoot macro. I really enjoy the fish pictures and the pictures of the tiny creatures. Wide angle is interesting, and I’m glad I learned how to do it better at this class, but macro is much more the type of thing I love to do. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always love me. Even though I had thoroughly checked out my equipment, including the aperture ring (it turned just fine on the bench), once I got to depth I found that the ring wasn’t fully engaged and I couldn’t change apertures. That really stunk. So I set the camera to shutter priority and shot the roll anyway. Found a nice golden tail eel that I shot at, and showed to Wes so he could get some with his wide angle set up. Then I went back to the boat, thinking that I could get a film change and go back down. If I had been thinking better, I would have realized that after 70 feet and 20 minutes down, I shouldn’t get back in the water until after a surface interval. On the way up, my Cobra Nitrox computer told me it wanted me to do a 4 minute safety stop with a 10 foot ceiling. When I got back to the boat, I was told that the rule was that you don’t go back down on a wall dive, so the point was moot. I stayed up, had some chocolate and soda, and waited for everyone to get back on the boat. Upon returning to the boat, they found that Chris and Sam had become Christina and Samantha. What a time not to have brought my digital. Both looked ravishing in their lovely dresses, beautiful hairdos, and those fetching hairy legs. Deco Don was not paying any attention to Christina or Samantha. Deco Don had found an Indigo Hamlet with Cathy and both were in heaven.
The next dive was going to be Stingray City. I had mixed feelings about that. The last time I’d been to Stingray City, we were dive bombed by stingrays, bitten, smashed into, and basically made pretty miserable. I was much happier when Cathy said that we could shoot macro if we wanted to, and that she also set things up differently with the stingrays, bringing only a few over at a time, and trying to keep other people out of the pictures. I had loaded Wes’ Nikonas with black and white film and a 15 mm lens I had borrowed in order to shoot some nice wide angle stuff without worrying about changing ports and lenses on board the boat. It was likely a good idea since the coral heads around Stingray City were FILLED with really wonderful creatures, including a beautiful golden tailed eel, a spotted cleaning shrimp, lots of blennies, and a huge green moray. I saw the moray free swimming, and followed him to a coral head. When I raised my camera to focus, he charged me. I pushed him away with one of my strobes and retreated quickly. He turned and attacked again. This time, I pushed him away with the camera. I swam away as quickly as I could. The damn eel followed. So I took a picture of him as he lunged for the camera lens. He bumped his nose on it, I gave another push, and he finally left me alone. That was very strange.
Back on the boat, Cathy and crew had arranged lunch for us. We had sandwiches, salads, cookies, more chocolate, sodas, and any type of beer we wanted as long as it was Amstel Light.
It was a rather sad goodbye to the boat and wonderful crew of very butch women on the shore. It was even sadder when we had to pack all of our camera gear and clear our benches. Given all of the stuff we’d bought throughout the week, it was amazing that anything fit. Luckily, Wes had bought a huge Pelican case in which the other stuff got stuffed. Cathy always seems to have the hard to find, the brand new, the innovative, and the coolest underwater photo equipment around. Of course, I want to buy all of it. I’m not going to mention all that I bought because I would run out of hard disk space, but suffice it to say, my budget is now limited for quite some time.
Graduation dinner was again at Casanova’s. When we arrived, Cathy and Herb had set up special places for Don and Martha to celebrate their 40th, me and Wes to celebrate our wedding, and Walt and his new fiancé to celebrate their brand new engagement. These guys sure know how to make people feel special. After another great dinner and far too much wine and champagne, it was back to the photo center for graduation. Not ever having gone through a Cathy Church photo course before, we had no idea what to expect. This was likely a good thing. Each class member had the agonizing task of picking their 5 best slides. This was agonizing for most because the class had been so good that there were often MORE than five that we liked. The slides were put into a graduation show where we got to see each other’s work and "oooh and aaaah" audibly and with great regularity. Of course, it helped that Dave went to the bar to fetch drinks and got us all rather tipsy. Some, of course, were more tipsy than others and we had much fun picking on them. Then they showed slides taken of us during the week. Boy did we do some really strange things that somehow were captured on film. Included in this fun were pictures of our lovely divemasters who both need to shave their legs. After each of us was "recognized" in one way or another (Wes looked stunning in his wig with antennas, and my fake nose was just fetching), it was off to bed looking forward to another morning complete with hang over and our last set of slides.
Sunday – August 13, 2000. Last Dive of the Trip
Sunday morning we got to sleep in until 8:30 when we could pick up yesterday’s slides. I was quite happy with the golden tail eel, and the spotted cleaning shrimp pictures, but it seems that I was too scared to properly deal with the green moray. Oh well. I had other green moray pictures, so all was not lost. We paid our absolutely humongous bill to the photo center (I won the coveted "Ker-Chink" award) and tried to find places to fit the huge amounts of mess that we had accumulated over the week. Of course, none of that stopped us from unpacking the photo gear and getting that "just one more" roll of film shot.
Diving out behind Sunset House again was quite fun. We were accosted by Sergeant Majors immediately upon jumping in the water. Then, two grey angels came from out of nowhere and decided we were going to be their fun for the afternoon, so they followed us everywhere we went. After some more blennies, flamingo tongues, shrimp, sponges, etc., we were found by a hawksbill turtle who hung out with us for awhile. Too early, it seemed, and we were out of film and ready to turn back. We rinsed out the gear, turned in the last roll of film, and basically relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.
Monday – August 14, 2000 US Scareways Strikes Again
Since we had plenty of time from when we woke up til our scheduled 1:50 flight, we got to say our final goodbyes to Herb and Cathy. Unluckily for them, this won’t be the last they see of us. We’re going on their Soloman Islands trip in April of next year J . We also got to say bye to the staff, finish packing up our various crap, and head off to the airport a civilized 2 hours before flight time. Or what we THOUGHT was flight time, anyway.
With typical US Airways regularity, the flight boarded a bit late. At this point, we weren’t terribly worried about it, since most people were on "Cayman time" anyway. However, as we finally boarded, it became clear that we were not going to leave on time. The doorway was still open, the air conditioning still wasn’t on, and people were still getting on board. Time began to pass. The temperature in the cabin was now 91 degrees. The heat was beginning to be overwhelming. Of course, a child seated directly behind me helped the mood by whining and kicking the back of my chair. Half an hour went by. Still no sign of closing the door. The temperature was now 92 degrees and climbing. Still the door was open. Finally, we were told that there was some type of problem counting tickets and matching them with passengers. This, of course, creates a security issue. So we sat. Temperature was now 94 degrees. Nobody offered us water. The heat was making us dizzy and nauseated. Finally, at long last, we departed. By this point we were over one hour late, the temperature was 94 degrees, and it took over 40 minutes in flight to bring it down to 82. It stayed rather warm for the entire flight.
After our insane delays, we felt there was no way we would ever reach our connecting flight scheduled at 7:20. We were going to land and deplane by about 6:30, go through immigration, get our bags, go through customs, then race from terminal D to terminal B and get on the flight. Of course, baggage handling was VERY slow. Immigration and customs, however, were very quick. The lines went through with great efficiency. Also efficient were the baggage transfer people, who got our bags from us almost immediately and put them through to IAD. Stupidly, however, there was yet another security checkpoint leaving customs that we had to go through. They wanted to "test" the box containing my wedding dress, likely afraid that the pearls were some sort of C4. After that minor delay, it was off to terminal B.
Running for terminal B proved to be a bit more problematic than originally planned. Several of the moving walkways were out of service, and the ones that worked were filled with people who were not in any type of a rush. Finally, we got through, raced to the gate to find…….the flight was delayed. Sometimes you’ve just got to bang your head on the nearest wall and scream "Why did we fly US Airways?" Well, because last time we flew American we got stranded in Miami. DOH. And why didn’t we take the Baron? Well, because 1) there was a magneto problem that was fixed by someone I really don’t trust and the time to find out whether it’s working is NOT when you’re over water for an hour and 2) US Airways was having a "sale." They seemed to have had a "sale" on people who couldn’t count as well. I’ll take two for a dollar.