July 1 -- We were planning to try to get on a flight to Dover that had quite a few seats available when we checked out of the hotel, but when we got to the passenger terminal, the available seats had been reduced to zero. So that answered our question about whether or not we should return our rental car. Instead, we just checked back into the hotel and had the afternoon to while away. We went to Edeka, our favorite German grocery store, and later, I even got a nap.
July 2 and 3 -- We got up early to attempt another flight, this time to McGuire. There were 53 seats free for this flight, but when we checked in a couple hours before the flight, we were told that we were already competing with over 120 people, so by the time roll call happened, we knew we probably wouldn't be on it. We had no choice but to turn in our rental car though since we only had it reserved through the second of July. As it turned out, I was only one seat away from making that flight, but as it turned out, we were so glad that we didn't make the flight (more on that later).
So we had to figure out what to do with the rest of our day. For those of you that know the C. family, you know how much they are into biking. It just so happened that the Tour d' France had started the day before, and it just so happened that we weren't too terribly far away from where Stage 2 of the race was taking place. We got another rental car, made new reservations for the hotel, and jumped in the car for a two and a half hour drive to Liege, Belgium where we saw the last 25 seconds of the race and then drove back. It was rather a hairbrained thing to do, but it fulfilled the life-long dreams of those biking fans and hey, bumped up my country count to an even 20 (and an uneven 11 for Baby T). We didn't get back to Ramstein until around 11 pm. By that time, they had updated the flight information for the next day, and we learned that a flight was leaving for Andrews at three in the morning. We thought that no one would want to be up that early and that we would have a better chance to get on. So we cancelled our hotel reservation for the night and just plunked down to wait in the lobby of the hotel. Again, there were 53 seats available, but as we waited for roll call, we kept seeing people that we recognized that had gotten on the McGuire flight the day before. The people that had made that flight had gotten on the plane and sat there for 3 hours before being told that the flight was cancelled due to a fuel leak. When we heard that, we were glad that we hadn't been selected. Unfortunately, it meant that the competition for the 3:00 flight was much greater than we had expected it to be, and we despondently watched all those same people get selected again while we sat there. But enough people didn't show up for roll call that our names were called at the last minute (only one person was selected after us).
Traveling on C17s is really a great way to fly because we stretched out in our sleeping bags on the floor after we took off, and I actually got almost a full night of sleep. When we arrived in the US, S's mom pulled up with impeccable timing less than 5 minutes after we walked out of the terminal. They dropped me off at Reagan Airport, and we parted ways after 6 weeks of travel. Then, it was just two more flights, a shuttle ride, and a car ride left before the epic trip was officially over.
In case you're worried about what you will read now that you don't have my travel blog to read, don't worry: I'll still post at least once more with some pictures (though I promise not to post all of them since I currently have over 1000 on my camera) and maybe some final thoughts.
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