Under Way Again

Well, it's time to fire up this blog again as another trip is starting. This time will be a little different, though. As most followers of this blog already know, I lost my dear wife, Diane, last November. This past May I journeyed North to hold a memorial service for her. After that, I visited my sister and she and Curley really hit it off. She volunteered to have Curley for the summer and I decided to take her up on the offer. So, Curley is vacationing in upstate New York and I'm traveling solo.

The short version of this trip outline is that I've traveled back to Arizona to join my cousin and her husband and five others of the family in driving a converted bus up to Alaska. We will tour some of the sights in Alaska, headquartered in Anchorage, and then head back via cruise ship and train and whatever else it takes.

I'll try to describe the bus preparation and the trip as it unfolds.

I spent yesterday traveling to Arizona via Delta airways. It's been 10 or 12 years since I've flown and I've learned to view air travel as a giant uncomfortable hassle and I don't look forwrd to it. That being said, yesterday's version was not too bad but still did have its' moments.

I should have anticipated the extent to which technology has invaded travel but I was surprised to receive an email from Delta 24 hours in advance of my departure inviting me to check in on-line. OK, I can do without standing in along line at the airport, so off I went to check in. Then I was surprised to see that I could have my boarding pass in electronic form to be accessed from my cell phone. Good thing, as my printer chose that exact time to run out of black ink. So electronic it is. I had misgivings about the process but it worked like a charm. I used my phone to get to my e-mail pass which had an embedded Q-code that was scanned at security and the gate. Easy-peasy.

I had allowed plenty of time to work things out at the airport so I was left with lots of people watching time. At my gate there was a young family with 3 very young boys. The youngest looked to be maybe 18 months or so. His mother had him in a stroller or in her arms but every time he wanted something he started screaming at the top of his lungs. He wanted something a lot. I figure that my luck would have him seated next to me but then I saw that only he and his mother and the next older boy acutally boarded and they were seated at the extreme rear of the plane, while I sat at about the midsection, next to the engine. Between the engine's roar and the cabin noise and the fact that I removed my hearing aids, he really didn't bother me at all. Even though he screamed all the way to Atlanta.

Those of us who have reduced hearing know that background noise severly reduces our capacity to effectively hear with any discernment. Thus my hearing aids were pretty much of no real use for the whole trip and they rested in my pocket most of the time.

I had a three hour layover in Atlanta so I got some lunch and then settled in for the wait. The noise level in a busy airport like Atlanta is so overwheming. It's kind of ironic that there are so many systems that are trying at the same time to convey some piece of information that nearly none of it gets through. Multiple topics and monitors and languages and volumes and constant paging just present a wall of sound. It reminds me of viewing a Jackson Pollack painting with its' mix of colors. I relied on watching the actions of the people at the gate to get a sense of what to do.

The flight West was pretty good. I was reminded of the downfall of scheduling a flight that departs on a summer afternoon. The high temperatures and building cumulous clouds mean turbulence when climbing or descending and sometimes along the way. We flew at 36,000 feet and still passed some storm cells that were higher yet. I had the window seat just inside the entrance door so I lots of legroom and a view of the passing landscape down below. Although I have been across the nation several times by plane, car, motorhome or motorcycle, I'm always amazed at the variety of landscape as we move West. The lush green of the East gives way to the spare landscape of the West over the miles. The vast areas where there just seems to nothing or next to it. Not roads nor trees nor people. Don't bother to put in cell towers when there's no one to use them. Finally we break over a strip of mountains and there is greater Phoenix laid out below enveloped in a cloud of brown smog.

My cousin and her husband were there to meet me. After a quick potty stop we were off to find dinner. It was 5:30 in Arizona but my body was telling me it was 8:30 so I was ready to eat. A cold beer sounded like a good idea so I suggested a local brewery that I had remembered from being there before. It's called Gordon Biersch and they have several locations around the country. They have great German style beer and great food to boot. So we had a good dinner and then headed back to home base. The trip had a combination purpose for them. They had come to Phoenix to buy horse feed so they had brought their pickup. On the way, they got a call to postpone the feed and transport RV supplies instead. So we wound up bringing back a two door refrigerator, a tub, a toilet and a generator. With all the delays we didn't get home until 12:30 NC time and I was beat. Off to bed.

Now the project is to equip a 1997 MCI bus to serve as an RV for the trip North. Right now it is a virtual shell, waiting for the modifications to make it a livable unit for the duration. That will be the next part of the story. And that will mean pictures.