Today I did practically nothing except fly a lot. I did get to see Enchanted without having to subject any loved ones to it; it was nowhere near as good as I’d heard or even as good as I’d hoped. (Hey, I wonder what we’re flying over, there’s weird areas of green light! We’re descending into Sacramento as I write this.). Anyway, the highlight of the movie for me was Susan Sarandon. She was smokin’ while in human form, and devilishly entertaining when she was a dragon. Oh, and I spilled yogurt all over myself during my brief layover in Chicago. Slick, huh? Man, I forget what else I was going to say. I’m just writing this because I can’t turn on my connection, I’m tired of reading about sao braphet song for a while (that’s part of my paper on transgender children), it turns out my iPod has no battery charge, and one can only lose so many rounds of BrickBreaker before one gives up. I’ve been playing DopeWars too, but the interface sucks. So I’m writing this entry instead. Oh, here comes the turbulence they warned us about. Writing this entry is good for practicing character entry on my Blackberry, too - I’m already quite fast, but the keys are much closer together than on my Sidekick 3 so I fatfinger them more often. I keep typing m’s as n’s. Hey, this turbulence is pretty turbulent! Kinda fun, since I’m not really worried about safety…it feels like it should be scary but I know we’re fine. My ears have been doing okay so far; after January’s descent into Washington I have been worried each time I take off and land. (Just in case I never mentioned that, what happened in January was I couldn’t pop my ears, and I was in so much pain I was crying. Thank goodness for reassuring flight attendants.). So even though I’ve landed and taken off - let’s see - 11 times since then, I still wonder each time if it’s going to hurt. The audiologists at Gallaudet told me not to be surprised if that does happen again though. Oh that reminds me - I got to chat with somebody while waiting at the gate at National. Suddenly somebody sat down next to me with a Sorenson VRS backpack! Turns out he’s an audiology grad student at Gallaudet, and his girlfriend is deaf so he actually (gasp!) knows sign. Not many audiologists do, oddly enough. Same with speech therapists…there are a lot of people who work directly with people with hearing loss every day, but they don’t sign. I don’t get it, myself. Man, are we there yet? When I started writing this they had just announced we’d probably be on the ground in about 30 mins, it sure feels like it’s been that long already. I haven’t gotten to stretch at all since we left Chicago…when flying with a friend or family member you can invade their personal space for a moment to stretch, but I wouldn’t do that to a stranger. Oh hey, flight attendants prepare for landing please, guess we are almost there - I gotta turn this off now!

Hello from San Juan! I’m writing from a Notepad window actually, because the wifi connection here is SO flaky. Once I’m done writing I’ll try to connect again and again until I upload it.

Our flight down here was just fine. I had a chatty person next to me on the way to Fort Lauderdale. She was sitting on the aisle, and chatting with a guy across the aisle who had the whole row to himself - I have no idea why he didn’t just move over and take the window seat and let her have the aisle on that side. I managed to sleep for a great portion of the flight, fortunately, but toward the end I woke up and she chattered at me a lot.

The Fort Lauderdale airport is absolutely dismal. We were in Terminal H and the only thing I was able to find to eat that was timely, inexpensive, and not really bad for me was a granola bar. The flight to San Juan was fine, I slept about half the trip; this time I had the window so when I woke up I was comfortable and not next to some chatterbox. We landed uneventfully but had a hard time getting our luggage because the carousels weren’t properly marked. Once our flight’s luggage finally started to appear, ours came up fast and we got a cab to the Coqui Inn. The cab driver was a complete ass, though. We had spotted the hotel from a ways away, and we were surprised when he blew right past it, so we said something. He said “oh, well, you obviously know better than me” and then dropped us off in front of something else that was also labeled with our hotel name, but was actually a BACK entrance. We had to drag our suitcases back down the block to the door we had gone past in the first place…the cabbie was an asshole and didn’t deserve a tip.

Our hotel is really cute and charming, there are murals everywhere that I will have to take pictures of! Our first room had a slow leak in the toilet, though (I discovered this before using it, fortunately), so we had to switch. We ended up in a slightly nicer room, and unpacked all our stuff. I did some school work (despite the crappy wifi) and we ordered pizza and watched X-Files. Then we decided it was too late to catch the A-5 bus to Old San Juan - it was 6pm when we were thinking of leaving, and the bus only runs till 9pm; after that you have to take a $20 cab back. So we decided we’d just walk to a nearby grocery store instead. It rained part of the trip but we found safety in a bus shelter and chatted about things. We continued on, and bought a bunch of stuff. I had to get a new bottle of continous spray sunscreen - we’d accidentally left it in the carry-on, and it was more than 3oz, so they threw it out in DC. We also got some diet champagne cola soda, which is impossible to find back home - you can get the regular kind, but never diet! We also got a $7 bottle of vodka and some juice to mix it with, plus some snacks, and then we came back to the hotel.

We were hot from walking, and A beat me into the shower to cool off. Unfortunately, while in there, she discovered…there was no hot water in the shower. So she went to the front desk and they offered us a couple of other rooms, one of which had better wifi than this one, but the rooms overall weren’t better. So we’re still in the room with no hot water in the shower, but it’s a nice room and very Caribbean-feeling. (One of the others we were offered felt like a dorm room.)

I think tomorrow we are going to the Arecibo radio telescope, assuming we can get a rental car. I was surprised that there was no public transportation out there, but I guess it’s too far. I am going to have to take stock of my schoolwork tomorrow too; today was long and hectic but tomorrow I want to make sure I can keep up with everything. It’s essential that I keep up.

I have a connection at the moment, so I’m going to upload this. I’m pretty tired anyway! Tomorrow I will be taking pictures even though I didn’t today. Oh my god, A just went to get up from the bed and said “Oh, a nasty roach!” This hotel may be charming but it’s a little scary! So now we are making sure all food goes in the fridge!

Today we flew home. That’s pretty much all we did. Except I woke up this morning officially sick instead of just feeling poorly. I made it home fine, except for the descent into Washington. I think a combination of the October 2006 scuba accident and being congested from the cold combined into a terrible situation in my left ear, and I thought I was going to die. It wouldn’t pop no matter what tricks I tried. I was literally in tears from the pain. I thought for sure my eardrum was going to rupture again. Fortunately a flight attendant talked me through the “pinch nose and blow” trick, which I had tried and not succeeded with…she said the trick is to do it very slowly. The pain when my ear popped was intense but it quickly subsided after that.

So yeah, I feel pretty crappy today. I am planning to spend most of tomorrow in bed, but I do want to run over to our house - we’re still house-sitting - and get the mail and whatnot. I miss California already, and not just for the weather. A has wanted to move back there for years, and I’m considering the possibility after I’m done with school. In fact, I kind of want to pick up and go now, but Gallaudet is the only place to get the experience I want.

Saturday came too soon, of course. A and I ate our leftovers from the night before, and then had plenty of time to kill. Eventually we went to the pool bar, where I got more than a little drunk on Banana Quit and Coconut Kooler - for some reason none of the bars offered any kind of food, which might have helped me out a bit. C and :R: joined us for a bit, but then :R: left to go back to air-conditioning. The three of us moved over to Spicer’s (I think I was able to walk on my own) and shared a couple of plates of fries. We found :R: in the Television Lounge in the main hotel building, and we sat around and watched music videos for a couple of hours until it was time to go. Getting to the airport was no problem, but we did have a bit of a wait to check in. Of course they had problems printing my tickets, so it was a while before we could join the next line, the preliminary security check. While the other three stood in that line, I went and paid the $20/person departure fee. When I rejoined my friends, they’d moved about halfway through the line - only one man was checking everybody’s passports! Once we got past him, it was the usual metal detector check and then on to the waiting areas. A bought a couple of things in the duty free shops, and then they announced our flight, so everybody got up and formed a line…and stayed put. They finally announced a problem and said that boarding was canceled, so everybody sat back down…and stayed put. They didn’t update us for a long time, and finally I heard that if you showed your boarding pass at the snack bar, you could get a free non-alcoholic drink. I presented ours and got a couple of sodas; meanwhile A had ordered some cheese sandwiches from the upstairs restaurant to be brought to the snack bar, because after passing through security you had to stay there until your flight left. She also tried contacting US Airways because we could tell we’d miss our Philadelphia connection, but she couldn’t get any further than the Grenadian operator; the gate agents were utterly useless as they promised everything would be taken care of by the time we got to Philly. Our cheese sandwiches arrived within minutes of our flight being actually called for boarding; A held onto both of them even though we were in separate rows. When the flight attendant came around with the snack bags, she said “here’s your vegetarian meal” and handed me…a low-fat meal. With meat. I pushed the button and got her back, and she realized that she’d given my meal to :R: “and he’s already eating it.” Okay, fine, could she please go up to Row 12 and ask the woman for one of the cheese sandwiches? It took a while for her to figure out what I was asking (and apparently she still wasn’t clear when she asked A about it), but she did return with my cheese sandwich. I missed out on the plaintain chips and cookie, but the sandwich was heavy and compensated somewhat. The rest of the flight was uneventful; C and I did my crossword puzzles together, and we played Scrabble on my Visor. Of course we did get to Philadelphia quite late, and because that was our port of entry we all had to wait for the baggage to be unloaded and show up on the carousel, and then we had to go through customs and immigration. The baggage was the longest wait - the legal proceedings went fairly quickly, we’re American citizens and only bought souvenirs overseas, and we weren’t in a country where Mad Cow Disease is prevalent - but I don’t think there was any chance we could have made our connecting flight to BWI, even if we hadn’t been two hours late leaving Grenada.

Getting to Grenada was quite easy. I drove to BWI and didn’t have trouble finding parking in one of the satellite lots, and we had timed it perfectly to hop right onto the shuttle to the terminal. Checking in was no problem, and the line for security was long but moved quickly. (C set off the alarm and had to be swiped with a wand, but of course there was nothing to find.) We had a while to wait before our flight, but it wasn’t crowded and we boarded easily. When we got to Philadelphia, we moved quickly to get to our next gate, but then we still had some time to wait. We were all in the same row, and unfortunately that was the very last occupied row in the plane. (The row behind us was reserved for the flight attendants, one of whom was crocheting a cool handbag.) When we landed at Point Salines we were dreading the wait to get off the plane, but suddenly they announced that we would be deplaning using front and rear stairs! This made us the first ones off and put us first in line for immigration. That went very smoothly, and we were waiting at the baggage claim before it even started moving. (Naturally our bags weren’t the first to show up, but at least they all made it there.) As soon as we headed out of the claim area, we were accosted by someone offering a taxi ride - well, sure, we had to get to the hotel somehow, right? We were a bit dismayed to find that it was only a five minute drive to the Rex, as we’d thought we were to be closer to Grand Anse and St. George’s. We didn’t feel like doing much right away, of course; A and :R: got some drinks at the poolside bar (which was not accessible from the pool, but rather was adjacent to it), where I joined them a little later. Finally the four of us had dinner at the Oriental Restaurant, which had a vegetarian menu but whose pad thai wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It was good, though, and I had my leftovers packaged up to eat later (I never finished them).

Istanbul to Amsterdam

The flight was entirely uneventful. We pushed back from the gate on time, and my girlfriend was asleep before takeoff. They brought around orange juice and hot towels early on, and I read the inflight magazine. Breakfast was Turkish-catered, and included what seemed to be scrambled eggs and something like mashed potatoes packed into tight triangles. There was also a nice hot bun with butter, strawberry jam, and Turkey’s version of Laughing Cow cheese. The breakfast also included a strange cup with what looked like white cheese, something made with spinach, a tomato, and more things beneath that - but I didn’t take off the plastic wrap. They brought a tray of pastries after a bit, then later in the flight a tray of candy bars and cookies. The last service was a choice of water, orange juice, or apple juice. We landed on time in Amsterdam and while we did have to wait a bit, it wasn’t too hard getting off the plane.



Schiphol Return

We had about 90 minutes to kill before we were due at the gate - much better than racing to make the connection - so we wandered through Schipol’s “See Buy Fly” duty-free shopping areas. We picked up a couple of small trinkets in one shop for the equivalent of about $25, and then wandered around again. Only once did we encounter the other member of our group who had been on our flight from Istanbul; we later heard his flight to Atlanta being called for a 10:55 departure. We peeked at the airport’s casino and I wanted to see the chapel but for some reason the signage stopped abruptly - you’re directed to the left, and then find neither the chapel nor another sign. We headed back downstairs and my girlfriend decided to stop at a cafe. I had a raspberry yogurt drink and a fruit tart, and she had a doughnut and water. When we finished, we headed to the gate and waited by a wall. Airport staff emerged from the waiting room and began setting up a large security area with six lecterns, forcing the passengers to crowd between the rope and a moving sidewalk (which you couldn’t lean on because the handrail was moving). We were fairly close to the head of the line, and I would have let my girlfriend go first but they wanted us together. The security officer gave us an extended version of the “have your bags been with you at all times” question given at check-in in the U.S., and wanted to know about electronic battery-operated devices. my girlfriend mentioned the camera and that we each had Palm Pilots, and he entered something into an electronic keypad sitting on the lectern. He then asked where we had been prior to Amsterdam, and I told him Istanbul. He asked us more questions - how long were we in Turkey (three weeks), where did we go (western Turkey’s tourist traps)? He went off and talked to someone, then when he came back put stickers on the back of our boarding passes. He asked if we spoke Turkish, and I said not more than hello, goodbye, and where is the bathroom - the last of which he repeated in Turkish and waved us on. We waited a while in the waiting room, and when they called rows 32 and higher we headed for row 36. I had managed to get seats A and B, which are a pair on one side of the plane. There’s an aisle, a row of five seats, another aisle, and two more seats. my girlfriend let me have the window, and we sat at the gate for 45 minutes or so before pushing back around noon.



Amsterdam to Washington

We didn’t have to wait long on the runway; we taxied into position, waited our turn, and took off. I declined the first beverage service, and when it was time for the meal I was alarmed that they didn’t bring our vegetarian plates, and it didn’t help when my girlfriend confirmed that yes, on occasion they really do give away special meals to people who didn’t order them. It turned out that the regular pasta plate was vegetarian, though, so we had what was supposed to be pasta with tomato sauce but was more pasta with overcooked vegetables and light reddish-orange goo. The dish also included a mix of salads, a room temperature bun with margarine, and a strange dessert. It was partly chocolate so I didn’t have any, but my girlfriend didn’t finish hers. The pink grapefruit juice was a bit sweeter than I would have liked, but it was still good. Because we were awake, we both watched the movie. It wasn’t very good, but it did kill at least 90 minutes, and maybe as much as two hours. Around the time we hit the East Coast and turned south, they served a snack of pizza and ice cream. My girlfriend determined the pizza was worse than school pizza, and while the ice cream pops were okay, they were dipped in chocolate. She tried eating off the chocolate and letting me have the vanilla ice cream inside, but all we did was make a mess. We were just a few rows from the back of the plane, so when we landed it took forever to get out. We went under the sign for US citizens and had our customs declarations stamped, then went to wait by a luggage carousel. One of our suitcases turned up fairly quickly, but we had to wait a while for the next one. We each took a bag and went up to a customs agent. The only thing she asked was if our bags had been with us since arrival, but when I passed through she pulled my girlfriend’s declaration back out and looked at it, probably because we had the same address and each family only needs one declaration. We found the taxi counter, and I went to get some cash from an ATM. There was nothing unusual about the ride home, and we deposited our suitcases right inside the front door.

Schiphol

We arrived at an E-terminal gate at Schiphol, and expected to find our flight at nearby E10. No such luck, though, the gate had been changed to D48 - which of course was at the far end of another wing. We were already doubly delayed from two earlier problems, yet we managed to make it to our gate. I saw a lot of things I would have liked to have looked at closer, but we didn’t have time. When we reached the gate the boarding area was filled so we had to wait to even check in.



Amsterdam to Istanbul

We got settled on the plane, and then they announced there would be a 70-minute delay due to weather. They apologized for not telling us sooner, but they were already halfway through boarding when they learned of the delay. We were pretty cramped, but KLM has a good in-flight magazine that kept me entertained for most of the time sitting. They also handed out apple juice and a really good almond cookie - I even got a second one. At some point I fell asleep, and woke up to heavy turbulence and lunch on my tray table. The shaking ended after five or ten minutes, and I examined my lunch. The salad was smaller than the one on the overnight flight, and had thin beet strips on it. I had been given couscous with anise sauce, and my girlfriend had vegetarian lasagna. She said she wasn’t very hungry, so I ate her lasagna, and her salad too. I also got a good roll and put butter on it. We were given fairly tasty strawberry ice cream for dessert, and then I fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until my girlfriend told me we were about to land. We made it through customs easily, and the rest of the night was rather uneventful.

Beginning

I’m going to try keeping a journal; we’ll see how it goes.


The theme of our trip so far has been “Transit Woes.” A short piece of road near our house was closed due to flood conditions, so we had to go the long way around. Fortunately that route was passable, so we didn’t lose too much time. Check-in at Dulles was reasonably painless, and we were at our gate with time to spare. Even boarding was okay, and we were settled quickly.



Washington to Amsterdam
The plane left the gate, moved onto a taxiway…and sat there. It turned out to be an electrical problem, so we had to go back to the gate and shut off the engine so a mechanic could fix the problem and sign the necessary paperwork to certify the plane for takeoff. Of course once that was done, we had to wait while they topped off the gas tanks - I guess they’re not allowed to leave for transatlantic flights if the tank isn’t full, and we had burned up gas sitting for so long.



The flight itself was free of problems: no turbulence, and we got our vegetarian meals (cheese lasagna, a salad with no dressing, a hard rye-like cracker with some butter, a small bunch of grapes, and water). I didn’t feel well and a flight attendant was really helpful.



One guy in the row ahead of us kept trying to sneak a cigarette in the bathroom, and when he was ordered not to he became very agitated and started acting out, which scared the passengers around him. Several flight attendants spoke to him, one mentioning he would be arrested in Amsterdam and would not be permitted to fly Northwest Airlines again. At one point we watched him get up and try to physically persuade an attendant of something; she immediately took a big step back and made him sit down. The helpful flight attendant told us later that if he bothered us, to report it immediately: he had tried to ask one of the other female crew members for sex. Something other than a nicotine craving was wrong with this guy, and it couldn’t have helped that he had several beers over the course of the flight.



I didn’t sleep much, and I don’t think my girlfriend did either as a result. The weather was bad in Amsterdam so we had to circle once over the English Channel and again over the airport itself before we were cleared to land.