Santiago to Lima to Washington DC and then to Akron, Oh. A military coup took out the Bolivian government after I took off on the flight to Lima. The connection in Lima was coming from Montevideo, but due to the coup, was not allowed over Bolivian airspace, so flight cancelled. Didn't leave until next day, but now I had to fly to JFK and then get over to LaGuardia to be able to fly into Cleveland. This was pre-cell phone times and luckily got a hold of a grandfather to let him know that I was flying home, not to Akron-Canton, but Cleveland.

I was coming from winter. I had been at the southern tip of South America on the Straits of Magellan (Punta Arenas), where we had snow. It was July, and I'm coming home in the dead of a very hot and humid summer. They had us fly to Dulles to go through customs and then on the JFK. I then had to find a way to get from JFK to LaGuardia. I asked around. There was a bus, but I asked a taxi how much it would cost for his service. He told me about $10. I was sold (this was 1980, so imagine prices differently). Well the $10 turned into $75. All the money I had, because we got stuck in rush-hour traffic. The jerk left me a good 1/4 mile from the terminal. I had to wear my overcoat as I also had 3 pieces of luggage and a box. I was sweating like a pig. I would have to take 1/2 of my luggage about 20 feet ahead and then go back and get the other. I did this for the full 1/4 mile. I was soaking wet from sweat when I got to the terminal as it was like 96 and 90% humidity--and like I said, I was coming from winter. I looked like I had been in a shower with my suit on.

By the time I got to the terminal, my flight had left. No way to call anyone and warn them. They put me on the next flight that evening and I hoped someone would figure out to wait for the next flight. Luckily they had. What a trip.

One side note of weirdness on the trip. There had been a mix-up in my mission. They never informed me, after having told me what day I was leaving Punta Arenas, that I was to spend a week up in the mission home city because they couldn't get a flight home for me until then. So I show up with plans to leave that night and spend the day in Santiago with 3 of my former Chilean companions, who had already completed their missions. The mission president gave me permission to spend that week in Vina Del Mar with one of them and so I did. Two of my companions had been his assistants, so he knew them pretty well. It was a blast, but I got a cold. As noted, I left snow in the south and Vina is like southern California and generally doesn't get cold. When I got on the flight home, a week later, I had a head cold and was stuffed up. As we start to climb in altitude, my head feels like it's about to explode. It was very painful. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, this blast of air starts shooting out from the pressure in my head. It was totally freaky, but afterwards, no more head pain.