Karl's Adventure - Part I

Saturday morning. Such a calm morning, with a little extra sleep, playing with the boys inside and outside in the snow. Noah created a compass out of juice can lids, duct tape, and foam. Maybe I should have brought it on my trip, since soon after I had plenty of issues getting from place to place.

Issue #1: Snowstorm. Flagstaff was just living up to its standing as the city with the 5th highest annual snowfall in the US. So instead of driving on icy roads covered with powder, I walked to the train station downtown. No big deal.*

Issue #2: Shuttle service in the snow. Despite their claims that they would be able to get me to Phoenix, they had 5 vans stuck between Flag and Phoenix. Not a good sign. People have gotten stuck for hours on end on the freeways around Flagstaff lately. If I missed my flight from Phoenix to LA, I would likely miss my flight to New Zealand. And that is a bad thing. I took a deep breath, booked a flight from FLG to PHX, and took a taxi to the Flagstaff airport.**

Issue #3: Getting planes in and out of FLG airport. Our flight got delayed about an hour, but we did get off.

Issue #4: When I think life has dealt me enough curveballs, I put my guard down. I hopped off the plane in Phoenix and went straight to my gate. I sat there and worked on my presentation that I will be giving in New Zealand for a couple of hours. When boarding time came around, I started looking around my terminal. I had gone to the right gate number, but in the wrong terminal. So I ran like a madman across the terminal, then was unable to find out which terminal it was, and asked 4 people in stammering, out of breath questions where I needed to go and how. I got onto a shuttle bus and made it there in time. But, of course, I had forgotten to empty out my water, so I had to go through security again. I made it just in time. ***

Issue #5: Air Pacific put 22:30 on all the flight information they sent me and boarding passes, but they meant 21:30. Fortunately, I got to LA with enough time that this worked out.

Non-Issue: The Tongan lady next to me was super interesting. I spent half the flight talking to her about the voyage she is involved in. Basically, she is captain of a sailboat that represents her country that is going all the way around the Pacific with a group of other boats from other Pacific nations.

Issue #6: When Karl is dehydrated, he is prone to motion sickness. And when Karl is on long plane flights and rushing around all day, he doesn't drink enough water. So Karl got motion sickness. While descending into Fiji, I checked on the "sick bags". There weren't any, and I though I could possibly need one. 30 seconds later I was hurling into a random plastic bag. The nice Tongan lady gave me another bag to put that one into. ****

Issue #7: Random plastic bags can't be trusted to be water-tight. Or vomit-tight. It started dripping onto my pants and seat, and by the time I realized that was going on, I was a vomitty mess. By this time the flight attendant had finally noticed and got me a stack of sick bags. Thanks a bunch. A bit too late. "Oh, we didn't have a sick bag there? Oops." There weren't any sick bags in any of the seats, actually.

Issue #8: I had regurgitated airplane meals on my pants and nothing to change into. Lovely. My bag was already headed to the connecting flight, and I didn't know if I'd have time to go through customs, pick up my bag, and check back in. I spent a long time in the bathroom scrubbing my pants, and ended up looking like I had had a different sort of bodily fluid issue. It still smelled incredibly rank. So I went looking for deodorant to buy in the Nadi airport. All I could find was a strange smelling fancy deodorant from a perfume shop for $11 in Fijian dollars. I had no idea how much that was, but I bought it anyway. Then I looked a buying shorts, but $120 Fijian seemed like way more money than I wanted to spend, so I stayed in my puke pants. *****

Issue #9: I had another flight and 5+ hours until I could get to my bag and change. I bought 3 liters of water and some ginger cookies for my unhappy stomach. I downed 2.5L of the water but could only get down 3 cookies. Bleh. I was ready to just go visit the Lowrys (my sister and her family in Fiji) and not continue on to NZ, but that's not how it works.

I need to go to my next session of the conference, but look for another installment of my adventures soon.

Notes by the editor who does not want to look like a bad wife:

* Please realize that I did offer to drive him and his huge backpack (and then some) to the train station. But he declined and I was ok with that.

** Please note that I also offered to drive him to the airport. He declined again. Just saying...

*** I knew he should've taken me on this trip with him. Good thing he is one of the fastest runners around or he wouldn't have heard the end of this one!

**** Actually. Never mind. I am glad I did not go.

***** Now I am really glad I did not go. So much for the not-wanting-to-look-like-a-bad-wife part.