Happy New Year

It's 2007 and Susan and I rang in the New Year at the Spokane International Airport.

We have just returned from 10 days in beautiful Des Moines, Iowa. Why? Because when you think Christmas, don't you naturally think Des Moines?! Me neither. But that's what we have been doing for the past several years and will keep doing for a few more years to come.

Des Moines is where Susan is from and her Dad, Gordon and Sister, Margaret live there. It has been the only long distance trip we make for the last few years. In the past, we drove. You can get from Spokane to Des Moines in 22 hours and 37 minutes. That's pretty grueling though, driving straight through and changing drivers every 4 hours.

But yesterday's marathon flying session took us all day (Over 13 hours) and we feel about the same amount of fatigue as if we had driven.

Now, to be fair, we only spent a total of six hours in the air. The rest was spent in various airports around the United States, which are lovely facilities to pass through, but who wants to linger there.

We started our day at Des Moines International where we had a civilized departure time of 11:20 AM. We went smoothly through check in and security and the plane left on time.

We knew in advance that we had a three hour layover in Cincinnati. When we arrived, it had turned into a four and half hour layover. This posed a problem for our final connecting flight into Spokaloo. They were able to get us onto a later flight so that seemed to solve that problem.

After many hours of beers and nachos at "Max and Edna's", we made it on board Flight 1541 to Salt Lake City. This was our longest and best part of the trip. We had first class seats, right up in the front row. We were able to recline in spacious comfort, drink copious amounts of alcohol of all kinds and watch a movie, "Scrooged".

When we finally landed in Salt Lake, we had about 40 minutes before our next flight which turned into an hour and a half cuz we don't got no plane.

That earned us a $14.00 food voucher which we spent on "beer and nachos."

When it came time to board, they threw one more monkey into the wrench by informing us that there were possible weather issues in Spokane and we might be landing in Pasco.

Fortunately, the weather cleared and allowed us to land in Spokane and get out of the airport by 11:30. That gave us time to stop by a friends house who was having a New Years party. We were both beat but we wanted to be festive for the New Year. The party must have been moved because when we drove up, Carine's house was dark and there were no cars in the street.

So, we came home and arrived just as everyone within a 200 mile radius found the illegal fireworks they had left over from the Fourth of July. We each enjoyed a shot of Peppermint Schnapps, enjoyed the artillary and went to bed.

May auld acquaintance be forgot...blah blah blah