Wow! What a day yesterday was for us.
As explained in a previous post, I only heard of Chalkie's mission six days before he was due to leave and when I heard that he hadn't been able to find anyone to track the flight my wife and I decided to volunteer for the task.
It was an adventure for us trying to make something work in a few days that should have been "properly" done over a few months.
During the flight it became obvious to us from the media talking about the tracking site and from the data showing traffic to our server that there was a lot more interest than we had expected.
Actually I don't know what we expected, we just jumped right in without really thinking because we thought it would be fun to do it and because it would have been sacrilege for this flight to take place without people being able to follow it.
We got a phonecall yesterday morning from Dolph (a partner in the challenge) and Maureen (Chalkie's wife) inviting us to join them in Cape town to welcome Chalkie home.
We didn't need any convincing and tickets for a flight from JHB to CTN were arranged in double quick time.
I went to my daughter's school and kidnapped her. Molly (my daughter) burst into tears when I told her why I was fetching her. She was
so excited that she was going to meet Chalkie after spending the last week surrounded by nothing but Chalkie stuff around the clock. At the time that she was called out of her class she had been telling her teacher and her class all about Chalkie and what he was busy doing and how her parents were involved.
We raced off to the airport and hoped that nothing went wrong because, even if everything went like clockwork, we would still only arrive in Cape Town with minutes to spare before Chalkie landed.
We landed at Cape Town and were immediately whisked away in a waiting car to the other side of the airport (didn’t realise how big the place actually is) to join the waiting crowd at the hangar where Chalkie would taxi to on landing.
We were immediately greeted and made to feel very important by Chalkie’s partners in the adventure and by his family. They hurriedly gave us special team shirts to put on and we were then allowed out onto the apron to wait for Chalkie, who landed just five minutes after we arrived. It was a VERY close call but our whole week has been like that.
Chalkie got out of his plane, hugged his wife and family and then walked a few paces to face a wall of media.
Among his first words: “Where’s Tim?”
Jules and I waved and shouted and he called us over, shook our hands and told everyone who we were and what we'd done.
We were so chuffed and felt quite humbled.
We were approached by one person after another thanking us for making it such a special event by allowing people to follow it.
Some people had had Chalkie parties where they’d invited friends to come over and watch Chalkie’s flight. Other’s showed us pictures on their cellphones of them and their families in their PJs in the middle of the night following the progress and reading my ongoing commentary. We’ve had emails from people all over the place thanking us.
It was just a totally amazing experience! Very hard to describe.
We feel incredibly privileged to have been involved.
I took some pics and got other folks to take some of us with my camera.
About three minutes after our arrival at the hangar, wearing our team shirts
Chalkie taxiing up to the hangar
Chalkie greets his family and partners in the adventure
"Where's Tim?"
Chalkie and our little Molly
Lots of media people
Meet the press
Tim, Jules, Molly
The Team (we're in there too - a real honour for us)
