day before embarkation

leaving was an adventure… the worst part, of course, is saying goodbye… always so difficult, and tho I am becoming a savvy traveler, expert packer, and ever-more technologically streamlined for the gig,  i still haven’t figured out how to make the goodbye part any easier… i’ll keep working on it… anyway, sleepy hugs from nino and the dog at 4:30 am, and then bob took me to the airport… kisses and then a smooth curbside check-in – love the curbside check-in!  no lugging the big bags around, waiting in line… our guitar player friend, dan, who stayed with us over christmas and is booked for this world cruise with bob and i was there, as well as a few other familiar faces from ships past…  friendly hang time at the gate, and off to an easy trip, right?  well, the travel office in it’s infinite wisdom only gave us half an hour to connect in minneapolis/st. paul, and, as our flight to the twin cities was late, that gave us approximately 6 minutes from de-planing til doors closing on our next flight (boarding on a different concourse about 35-40 gates away…) oh, and when I asked a helpful staffer, delta said they would not hold it… nice folks, those delta people… so all the guys go booking down the concourse with their 6 foot tall gait, and i, with one heavy carry on (dan took the other – nice guy!) struggled along shortly and after them as i hear the overhead announcing our final boarding call… barely made it and was literally the last one on the plane, and was so grateful not to have missed it… also glad our bags made it!  when we did get to the hotel, the bags, in fact, had settled in such a way against the latch of our passenger hotel shuttle that they could not get the door open to get them out for quite some time… was just about ready to go looking for a hammer to break the window, and they finally got them out!  checked in, called home to say goodnight, got room service and crashed!  what a day, but things could have been much worse, so i was grateful… ttfn, df