One of my all time favorite movies is Blues Brothers. Growing up, I watched this movie over a hundred times, and still, to this day, whenever play the movie again, I can instantly quote many of the lines from it. It was for this reason, that when I told the people that I was traveling with that I was in ” a truck”, I was instantly reminded of one of my favorite moments from that movie. I couldn’t help but laugh at the situation we found ourselves in. I was making my way to our airplane for a recent trip to Prague and I found myself in “a truck”. I even texted this fact to my friends I was traveling with, and was instantly reminded of this line.
To be clear, my wife recently had surgery on her ankle which means that she has to walk around on crutches for awhile. She is doing great, but she is just getting to the point of being weight bearing on it, and that means that she tires out pretty easily. This does not work well when traveling to Europe where everywhere you go, it is best to just walk there or take public transportation. We decided to bring a wheelchair with us to get around town with more ease, but getting that on to a plane is not always the easiest, especially when the company you are flying with is RyanAir.
To be fair, RyanAir was very respectful and accommodating. I usually do not have many nice things to say about the company, but in this case, I do. We had to gate check the wheelchair which we thought meant giving the wheelchair to the people at the gate, and then getting it back when we got off the plane, but this was not the case. Instead, we were pulled from the line, taken to one of those trucks that they use to load food on to a plane, and got to ride on that in order to get on the plane.
We got to skip a lot of the headache that we usually experienced with flying RyanAir and moved through many of the security measure quickly at the airport. Still, it was a little excessive. We just needed to wheelchair put on the plane, so we could get it back when we got to our destination. We did not need a whole group of people dedicated to getting us on and off the plane. Still, there are other people out there that do need this kind of service, and it is nice to know that it is out there. It just shows that traveling does not have to be just for those who can easily get around. Everybody can get out there and see the world, so take that chance while you still can.
Until next time, keep exploring and experiencing life’s little pleasures.
John Collings 