After an action packed Wednesday, daughter-in-law Crystal picked me up to drive to the airport at 6 :30 am Thursday. What did I do Wednesday? I went to a dairy meeting with Josh in the morning, after I packed my carry-on and walked out to the barn and printed off my itinerary (it was cold outside, -33 C)then I tried to pick up my new glasses (sadly they did not arrive in 7-10 days, so Micah and Crystal will bring them when they come next month) and got something Garry had asked for at the vet office. I saw all the grand kids, baby Isaac twice. I went to Piney for dinner with the little girls, and finished after getting home at 8 pm by cleaning house, including the laundry room and the oven, and repairing Jess' old dollhouse for the girls to play with when they come to the farm) and then finishing packing and cleaning my room until 1:30 am. I did wait until 6 am to vacuum!
We got to the airport around 8:30, I was glad we had good roads instead of a snow storm like when I went in with Garry two weeks earlier. I checked in, got extra screening on my computer at security (Noah's bolts he drilled in to fix the broken hinge on my laptop must look suspicious). Couldn't connect on wifi, so I got out my book reader and ate a honey dip donut with a cup of tea while waiting for my 10:40 flight. Flights went pretty well, we were a little late out of Winnipeg, but that's why I selected the four hour layover instead of one in Toronto, so no problem!
I enjoyed a nice sit down meal at A&W after landing in Toronto- one last delicious root beer before leaving for Ukraine, land of Coke (or Pepsi) Sprite and Fanta. I ate a mama burger and sweet potato fries with chipole mayo dipping sauce, sipping my big, frosty glass mug of root beer; while looking across the hall at the Hudson's Bay Trading Post store, which has some cute baby sleepers and sweaters with the traditional multi-color stripes. Expensive and cute, I walked over and checked before heading toward the international gates about 3 pm.
The flight to Vienna was smooth, although I was in the second last row, and my carry on ended up in the overhead bin 14 rows ahead of me, because the guy in the window seat didn't like it when I stuffed it under the seat (he was reading in Russian during the flight, so I decided that explained the complaining, and the fact his legs were definitely over on my side, but I don't complain to people on the plane just later). No meal choice by the time they got to us, but the pasta was very good anyway. So were the movies and two of my after dinner choices were boring enough to let me doze off for short periods of time. I was dozing off again as breakfast, a warm ham sandwich on a rather hard bun arrived. I went with a can of Coke for my morning caffeine fix since I was getting a headache ( I don't drink coffee, don't even like the
I had plenty of time to make the flight to Dnepropetrovsk, even with another security check before heading to the gate. I even had time to get my book reader back out and eat a granola bar from my bag. It was a get on the bus to the plane connection, and by the time I got on to plane, I could not squeeze my little roller bag into the overhead compartment, but a flight attendant took it into a cupboard up front, where I retrieved it after landing. I enjoyed the biggest seats of the whole trip and a little snack bag of crackers shaped like planes and cloud shaped pretzels with tomato juice and a cup of tea on the plane and was looking forward to Garry taking me to lunch after landing.
We were coming in a little early to Dnepro, down through the clouds, landing gear down when we suddenly pulled up really fast. The pilot came on and announced we'd circle for a while, he had aborted the landing because he couldn't see the runway because of fog. After about half an hour, he announced conditions had improved some, so we'd try again, but if he aborted this time we'd go to Kiev.
That's what happened to our friends when Garry was supposed to pick them up the week before, so I was pretty worried about having to take the train back to Dnepro. However, we could see ground just before the airport. There was applause and I got out my phone and called Garry as we were taxiing toward the stop to deplane and take the bus to the terminal. Good thing I did, he was just about to go home. He had gotten to the airport, seen the delay and gone to Mc Donalds to wait and check online with the free wifi, and had just seen a message that the flight had been diverted.
I got through customs quickly and my bag was in the first half dozen on the belt, and did not get inspected, I just put my bags on the belt to run through the x ray machine and picked them up on the other side. I looked up as I was pulling up the handle on the big bag to pull it away, as I heard one of the officers speaking, but it was just to tell the girl behind me she had to put her bags through the machine. Garry wasn't even in the waiting room when I came out. I was trying to phone him when he walked in the door. He asked if was hungry, and I was, so we went to KFC for lunch. Since I wan't that tired, we stayed in the city until his English group at 7 pm. We did some grocery shopping and then sat in a coffee life and talked and surfed the web (well he did, I read more of the ebook I started earlier in the day).
I was pretty sleepy by the time we got home and unpacked the car, so we were in bed before ten pm, even though the pets and Masha (who was here at the house) were excited to see me. I woke up pretty early today, but still need to unpack. I did find the missing piece of the puzzle Garry put together last week. It was under the couch. Apparently Box had jumped on the coffee table where he was putting it together, and then he had to re-do it. I had bought it at the thrift store, so I was worried that it hadn't had all the pieces when he told me one was missing. It is an American flag with pictures of stamps on. I had bought it because he used to collect stamps he's decided it should hang near the Canadian flag puzzle made of tiny photos, the most difficult one he's ever done.
No comments:
Post a Comment