Paris-Dakar Rally

My travel plan for the month of December started out innocently enough. The annual conference of parties for the Montreal Protocol, in Dakar, was the week before Christmas, and I was scheduled to write for the Earth Negotiations Bulletin from there. As Mer-man and I planned to be in Sweden for the holidays, I thought, why not combine the two trips? I’d already crossed the Atlantic eight times thus far in 2005, and avoiding one more crossing seemed like a very good move. What I hadn’t counted on was the snow. What started as a carefully-planned itinerary thus ended up approaching a cross between the Paris-Dakar Rally and the Amazing Race.

After weeks of searching, I finally found a ticket that was inexpensive enough to satisfy the auditors, and also allowed me to fly back in late December on the same flight as Mer-man and my mother ("Mer-Mom"), who would meet me in Copenhagen on the way to southern Sweden. The plan was for my mother and me to spend a few days in Stockholm after Christmas, and fly home from there, while Mer-Man would stay a few more days with his parents in Skåne and fly home from Copenhagen. Unfortunately, this involved my booking two separate airline tickets – one from Boston to Paris (via New York) on American Airlines, returning from Stockholm via London, and another from Paris to Dakar and back to Paris on Air France. I also had a one-way ticket from Paris to Copenhagen in the middle. This would have worked out perfectly – except for the huge snowstorm that hit the northeast U.S. the very day I was to leave. Though I managed to get myself switched onto a flight to Paris via London instead – the New York flight was cancelled early on, and Logan was closed for four hours – I arrived in Paris seven hours late, and just minutes after the Dakar flight closed its doors. After standing in line to see the, as always, charming and accommodating [irony intended] Air France ticket office representative, he informed me that perhaps they could accommodate me on the next available seat to Dakar, which would be sometime in January. Thus scolded, I turned to the next available option – an Alitalia flight to Dakar via Milan, which left in just over an hour. “Run,” the ticket man offered helpfully, “Terminal 2B.” And thus I sprinted, just under 17 kg of wheeled baggage in tow, through the underground corridor, emerging at the Alitalia ticket office slightly out of breath, where I informed the slightly confused agent that I needed to buy a ticket on the next flight to Dakar. After saying it probably wasn’t possible, she clicked a few buttons on her computer and printed out a ticket for me nonetheless, directing me to run (again) to the check-in counter. Luckily, my training program had prepared me for this (the distance between terminals at CDG is nothing compared to the distance between Denmark and Sweden, which I’ll tackle in 6 short months), and I made it to the flight, and landed in Dakar in the early AM only a few hours behind schedule. Thus, I’d managed to hit Boston, London, Paris, Milan and Dakar in just under 24 hours.

Like almost all international meetings, most of my time in Dakar was spent in 18-hour days in a dark, over-air-conditioned conference center. Saving the ozone layer is a tiring proposition. However, it also has its rewards – towards the end of the meeting, an evening reception hosted by the government of Senegal featured a concert by the famous Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour. This, undoubtedly, was the highlight of the trip.

As the meeting ended, I returned to Paris via Alitalia, as my Air France ticket had of course been cancelled when I failed to show up on time for the first flight. Alas, the plane from Milan was scheduled too late to catch my originally-planned flight onwards to Copenhagen. I’d have to reschedule for the next day, and spend the night in Paris. Oh well, it was a perfect excuse to hit the Christmas sales! At least my travel problems were solved – that is, until Alitalia lost my luggage….