Home again, home again, jiggety jig
I flew home from Mexico on Tuesday.
I was trying to calculate how many flights I've been on this year and it's already been a dozen. This isn't counting the upcoming trips to San Francisco or the trip to New Brunswick I just found out about. I've got to start collecting travel points or something.
I spent a lot of time looking out my window on the way home. The flights out of Hermosillo are always on small planes and they fly low, so I can see the ground beneath me. We were flying along the coastline to L.A., and all I could see for miles was sand trickling into the ocean, pinpricked with little dots of sagebrush like poppyseeds scattered on the ground. The bushes tend to grow wherever there's water, so they follow the meandering inlets and tiny valleys in between the sand dunes where the rain builds up. From the plane I could see patterns: how the tiny trickles lead to streams, all filled with little black dots of sage. From up high, it looked like long strands of black hair streaming across the desert.
I ended up getting delayed at Customs for an hour and I kid you not, they went through everything I had with me. Because clearly "Manager, Marketing" for a junior minerals exploration company is code for Drug Smugging Mule, yo. Coincidentally,
chainsofchaos had been teasing me about getting up close and personal with a customs border guard, so it seemed heartily appropriate when, of all bottles, they decided to crack the 26 of Kahlua I had bought for him as a gift. *grin*
By 10:30 p.m. Customs had finally established to their satisfaction that no, I was not a drug mule, yes, the Kahlua really was just alcohol, and I was free to go. By now I'd been in and around airports for some 13 hours; it makes for a long day. I walked out of Customs and into the airport.
Dragon was there. Waiting for me.
He'd gotten in from Vegas an hour before, and he and his friends waited so he could welcome me home. So sweet. It's always a little sad to get home and have no one waiting for you. I remember years ago, when Controller came to visit me in South Korea for three weeks and take me home, no one met us at the airport. That's right. She was newly-married and had been gone for three weeks. I had been away for 14 months. We flew for some 26 hours to meet... no one. We actually planned to separate in the Edmonton airport and then go running to greet each other when we landed, but after three cross-continental planes neither of us had the energy.
It's so nice to be welcomed home. Have someone hug you and hold you and tell you it's good to have you back. To feel missed.
And it is so nice to be home.
I was trying to calculate how many flights I've been on this year and it's already been a dozen. This isn't counting the upcoming trips to San Francisco or the trip to New Brunswick I just found out about. I've got to start collecting travel points or something.
I spent a lot of time looking out my window on the way home. The flights out of Hermosillo are always on small planes and they fly low, so I can see the ground beneath me. We were flying along the coastline to L.A., and all I could see for miles was sand trickling into the ocean, pinpricked with little dots of sagebrush like poppyseeds scattered on the ground. The bushes tend to grow wherever there's water, so they follow the meandering inlets and tiny valleys in between the sand dunes where the rain builds up. From the plane I could see patterns: how the tiny trickles lead to streams, all filled with little black dots of sage. From up high, it looked like long strands of black hair streaming across the desert.
I ended up getting delayed at Customs for an hour and I kid you not, they went through everything I had with me. Because clearly "Manager, Marketing" for a junior minerals exploration company is code for Drug Smugging Mule, yo. Coincidentally,
chainsofchaos had been teasing me about getting up close and personal with a customs border guard, so it seemed heartily appropriate when, of all bottles, they decided to crack the 26 of Kahlua I had bought for him as a gift. *grin*
By 10:30 p.m. Customs had finally established to their satisfaction that no, I was not a drug mule, yes, the Kahlua really was just alcohol, and I was free to go. By now I'd been in and around airports for some 13 hours; it makes for a long day. I walked out of Customs and into the airport.
Dragon was there. Waiting for me.
He'd gotten in from Vegas an hour before, and he and his friends waited so he could welcome me home. So sweet. It's always a little sad to get home and have no one waiting for you. I remember years ago, when Controller came to visit me in South Korea for three weeks and take me home, no one met us at the airport. That's right. She was newly-married and had been gone for three weeks. I had been away for 14 months. We flew for some 26 hours to meet... no one. We actually planned to separate in the Edmonton airport and then go running to greet each other when we landed, but after three cross-continental planes neither of us had the energy.
It's so nice to be welcomed home. Have someone hug you and hold you and tell you it's good to have you back. To feel missed.
And it is so nice to be home.