July 24th - el dia uno

"Dan, our flight got canceled. Adam is coming to get the key."

This is how our trip began. I had the vague sense of a light being turned on in another room as I was sleeping in our bedroom. The next thing was Kristin hovering over me speaking the aforementioned sentence. I looked at the cable box connected to the tv in our bedroom and having trouble focusing I thought the time said 4:30, 15 minutes later than I planned to get up. It didn't. It was actually 1:30 in the morning, I hadn't actually fallen asleep until 12:30 so being an hour deep into my sleep for the night I was very discombobulated. It took a few minutes for me to come to enough to get up out of bed.

"What key are you talking about?" Kristin was on the phone but I couldn't process why "Adam" was coming to get a key from me.

"The key! Marc and Jen's key! They're stuck in Chicago and Adam needs to go check on the dogs." Oh, right. Our friends down the street, Marc and Jen, we have their key because I was checking on their dogs while mom and dad were out of town getting married. Adam is Jen's brother. It's starting to make sense now. What? Our flight is canceled!

Trouble in Chicago. A lightning storm. The same storm that was keeping Marc and Jen stuck at O'hare was creating the situation that caused our cancelled flight. We were flying from Rochester to Chicago to Miami to Cali. Chicago's out.

Here's Kristin talking on the phone and surfing the net trying to get us on another flight.



Kristin was able to get us on another flight with another carrier. We started on US Air and then transferred to American Air for the final leg. I had arranged a car service to pick us up at 4:45 in the morning but now our flight wasn't leaving until 8:30. I called the car service thinking no one would answer, it was 2:30 in the morning. "Hi Dan!" The voice on the other line answered. Wow, are there really people who need cabs at 2:30 am in Rochester? So I changed our reservation to 7:00. All good.




This is a picture of our luggage. It actually doesn't look like much here but we have (literally) around 200 pounds worth of stuff in these bags. Oh, by the way, if you see them, let us know. They're lost. Switching from one airline to another didn't go as smoothly as one would hope. Thankfully Kristin had the foresight to carry a few items onto the plane so we have a change of clothes and toothbrushes, etc.

Adam did come to get the key and proceeded to pull the knocker completely off our door. You can see it on the left hand side of the picture with the luggage.

Here are a few snapshots at the various airports. Kristin is smiling because she got her coffee. Ah, the simple things in life!

I really like the airport signage in Miami, it reminds me of the NYC Subway signage designed by Massimo Vignelli. I wouldn't be surprised if Vignelli did the Miami airport as well. Helvetica is beautiful.






We finally made it to the aeropuerto en Colombia and were picked up by Enrique, the proprietor of our hotel. He is a wonderful, warm and kind man, he immediately put me at ease and told me later, "Now that you are here you are part of the family!" A nice way to end a long, trying day. He was concerned that we were hungry on the way back to the hotel and arranged to have two plates of fruit (platos de fruitas) waiting in our room when we got there.