7 Quick Takes (Vol 106) The Travel Stories Addition.

Well the week has flown by. The weekend it ahead. Hurrah! And in keeping with my theme for this week below you will find just some snippits of our travel adventures. So, after you have immersed yourself deep into the joy that is my blathering be sure to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of the snow falling in the Frozen Northeat Ohio, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else has been doing.

1.
Our car was broken into in Hononlulu at the Arizona Memorial and all our backpacks and purses were stolen. Thank goodness I had my camera and billfold with me. And thank goodness that HHBL had a second, emergency credit card as a copy of our main credit card had been in the billfold of one of the progeny. Of course it might have been helpful if we had heeded this sign…….

2.
Flying to Florida one Christmas to visit the in-laws we sat and sat and sat at the airport because of bad weather. They finally put some of us on a plane that was scheduled to leave a bit earlier because we had connections that we would miss otherwise. Our new plane sat at the next gate over from the old plane. We got on the new plane….and sat and watched the plane we had been scheduled to be on pull away from the gate and leave before we did.

3.
Flying back from Ghana, making our connection in Brussels. Sitting in aisle seat in big plane. Horror of horrors person on other side of aisle and one row back proceeds to lose a large and heavy lunch all over his seat and the seats in front of him.

Lovely.

The people sitting in those two rows of seats are moved to another part of the plane. The seat cushions are removed and somewhat cleaned but not enough that I wasn’t aware….for a 8 hour flight….that someone had been sick very close by.

4.
Visiting the in-laws in Peru. HHBL goes to airlines office to confirm flight for next day only to find that the airlines had changed the flight times. We were supposed to fly out at 11:59p on a Thursday evening. They changed the flight time to 12:03a but instead of the flight leaving at 12:03a on Friday morning we were leaving at 12:03a on THURSDAY morning a full 24 hours earlier than we expected. And we found this out on the afternoon of the day that we were leaving. And this being Peru and the Lima airport had not yet gone through it’s very nice renovation we needed to be there about 3 hours early.

We moved very quickly to get ourselves packed and to make new arrangements for transportation to the airport.

5.
Flying from Phoenix to Palm Springs, CA in a little puddle jumper. The kind of plane where the pilots have to climb over the seats when entering the cockpit. They are in pre-flight check mode, the door to the cockpit is open and I am in the seats in the first row so I can see directly into the cock pit.

All of a sudden all the lights on the instrument panel go out. Blank. Black.

Co-pilot leans over and bangs on the instrument panel with his fist.

Lights come back on.

Check list goes on.

Instrument panel lights go out again.

Co-pilot says a bad word, bangs on the panel again, lights come back on.

And then he realizes the cock pit door is open and I am staring into the cock pit with eyes that must have mirrored my growing panic.

He smiles weakly and closes the door.

I sweated ALOT on that flight.

6.
I should have known what our traveling life would be like because our the incident on our honeymoon 25 years ago. We were flying from Miami to San Juan to take a cruise. The weather was VERY bad in Miami. Torrential rain. But we made the flight and they held the boat because so many of us were delayed.

But my suitcase with all my dresses didn’t make the flight.

And didn’t make the boat sailing.

And our first day was at sea so I didn’t get my bag until the next day when we docked in Caracas, Venezuela.

And that was still a time when I was very self-conscious about what others thought about me. It was not a great couple of days. I had yet to develop the ability to laugh about the situation.

7.
And finally, when taking an overnight train in India from Salem to Chennai. The train arrives in the station around 10:10p. HHBL and I, along with the approximately 2000 other people standing on the platform, have around 10 minutes to get on the train, find our compartment and get settled before the train takes off.

Neither HHBL or I speak either Hindi or Tamil. We finally find what we think is our compartment with the help of our driver. It took a bit of time because the compartment that we thought was our already had people sleeping in it so we found another place to sit. We stow or bags and wait for the conductor. The conductor keeps telling us that our seats are “up there” pointing behind him. We insist someone had already been sleeping in the compartment where we were supposed to be so we found these empty seats. He finally gives up, punches our tickets and moves on. We make up our beds and try to get some sleep.

We find out later that he was right in a way. We had first class compartments tickets but ended up riding/sleeping overnight in the second class compartment because we got on the wrong train car.

AND I got to use this while on a moving train….

Good times! That little hole doesn’t lead to a tank of any kind by the way. It all just gets dumped right onto the train tracks that I could see whizzing by.

And are you even REMOTELY surprised that I took a picture of the toilet.

If you are you don’t know me at all.