Adventures in Travel

I'm in Wenatchee, Washington now, for a couple of months.

The trip was exhausting, but only a memory. It's over, for now.

The journey started in the Pierre Trudeau airport, at checkin. It turns out that when you purchase a ticket through the Web, you may not be getting what you think. I had two plane changes on my itinerary. I was to fly to Philedelphia, connect and fly to Las Vegas, and then get on a plane to Seattle. But it seems that I only had 40 minutes from the time I landed in Philly to departure time, and that's "illegal." So the agent bumped me up to an earlier flight. I had to say my goodbyes to my husband in great haste.

At Customs, I walked behind the wrong rope. Horrors. I was greeted by a fed, who told me never to do that again. I almost touched a pilot, I guess.

I didn't get searched, though they ran my purse through twice.

I sat down in my assigned seat on a 737, took a peek out the window, and found that it was raininng, which was surprising, since it was such a hot day outside. Then it began to storm, which led to a two-hour wait on the tarmac, for the storm to end. It was fun to watch the giant bolts of lightning hitting the control towers.

Oh, well. I did have extra time because of the earlier flight.

Once in Philly, I boarded just as I got to the gate. No time to buy a coke or anything. Luckily, they served me an entire can of coke on my five-hour flight. It wasn't so bad, though. After an extra 45 minutes on the tarmac, waiting for ten other planes to take off, we left with me, sitting in my own entire row of seats. I took advantage of such luxury by buying a headset and watching King King, which turned out to be a perfect flight movie. Movies sometimes look better than they are, when you desperately want to kill time.

The luxury came to an end at Las Vegas, where I was greeted by several video poker machines, right in the terminal. It was 11:30, it was loud, crowded, and full of bingo games and slot machines. That city is the reason they say the US is an energy-waster. The damned city is lit up like..Las Vegas. At Christmas.

I got on another timy 737, and sat between two young army recruits, one of which handed me a recruitment flyer. I found myself saying, "Oh, Lord, no," which ended any further conversation. It was hot, it was cramped, and army boys feel extremely entitled to take up their own space as well as others'. I put on the blower and hoped for the best. It was a sweaty, but mercifully short, flight.

I got into Seattle on time, greeted by my father. We waited at the baggage claim for an hour, and then, wouldn't you know it, I had to go make a claim, as my baggage was nowhere to be found. The guy, Paul, was really nice, and I didn't have much I cared about.

My father had driven to Seattle the night before, because we had an AM/PM mixup. He thought my flight was landing on May 31st at 2:33 AM, when it actually left on May 31st at 5:30 PM. So, he drove the 3 hours a second time to pick me up. He was so tires, he drove while I watched to make sure he didn't fall asleep. We stopped to nap a couple of times.

But now I'm here. The bags were shipped. Everything's fine. I already turned in an application to sort fruit for a few weeks, to make a little pile of money to help us rent a new place, and to help me buy a Canadian VISA application. All is going well. And that's all the personal stuff I'm going to tell you, for awhile. And then maybe I'll show you some pictures.