Icelandic Boycott

Tonight I am supposed to be jetting off to London, but instead I am sitting in my living room watching the 10pm news.  Why?  Because the Icelandic volcano, whose name no one can pronounce, has forced my flight and hundreds of others, to be cancelled.

I was supposed to visit tomorrow with my friend Amanda.  We were going to hang out in the city and go see the muscial Wicked.

Now I am scheduled to fly to Paris on Sunday night, but am having my doubts about if that will go or not.

Stay tuned..... in the mean time I am boycotting all things Icelandic.... according to my friend Amy that means Icelandic ponies and sweaters.

Belize Escorts

This past week, I was able to participate in an Airline Ambassadors Escort trip to Belize.  It was to be a two day trip with an overnight in St. Louis.  I would be escorting a little boy named Albert from STL to Belize and then bringing two children named Tifara and Valdimir out of Belize and back to Dallas/Ft. Worth before handing them off to a flight attendant named Susan who would take them off to St. Louis.

I actually met Albert once before.  In December, I was working the flight out of Belize that he was traveling on with a pilot from my airline named Mark.  (See http://ronno1976.blogspot.com/2009/12/albert.html).

I flew up to St. Louis on Monday night and spent the night at a local hotel.  I met Albert and his host family at the airport on Tuesday at 6am. The local Rotary Club sponsors the clinic in Belize that refers these kids to Shriners in St. Louis and I also met a Rotarian named Charlene who brought two cerebral palsy wheel chairs for me to transport as my "checked luggage".  I made sure to mention I was a former Rotary Scholar to Spain in 1997 :).  After getting checked in we had some time to kill so we sat at a bagel shop and passed the time before boarding.

Albert got a little emotional when it was time to leave.  This was probably going to be the last time he would be in St. Louis since his hip operation was a success and he was real attached to his host family.  After a few tears, we made our way thru security and to our airplane.

Albert slept most of the way to Dallas.  We had a few hours before our trip to Belize so we walked around the airport terminal.  Albert wanted his picture taken with the Rocky Mountain Chocolate bear.  I took him to our crew ops and we played with Hotwheels cars and he colored in the Transformers coloring book I brought along.

Our flight to Belize was great.  The crew was very nice and for some reason Albert was ticketed in Business Class, so I got to sit up there too.  We enjoyed a lovely lunch of grilled Hailbut and got to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox on the screen.

Since I fly to Belize a lot, I have gotten to know one of the agents down there quite well.  Her name is Shari.  I emailed her last week to let her know I was coming and would have limited time to get Albert dropped off and Tifara and Valdimir checked in.  She was scheduled to work that day, so she promised to be there when we arrived.  She got us sped thru customs and immigration.  Albert's family was waiting outside with some officials from the local Rotary club.  She had also already checked me in for my return flight and gotten us all seats together.

We had a little "photo shoot" as we exchanged kids and documents before making our way to the gate.

Valdimir and Tifara are both going up for a second round of procedures/operations.  Usually, the "goodbye" portion of the trip is hard on the kids and families, but I guess because these kids have been thru this already, and because they were a little older, they were pretty strong emotionally.

Since the flight was so light, the crew gave us an "upgrade" and the kids got to eat dinner and were a little more comfortable with a bigger seat.

We arrived in Dallas a bit early and made our way thru customs quite easily.  Susan, the flight attendant taking the kids up to St. Louis was waiting for us and she and kids made their way to their connection.

London

I've got two London trips this month, thanks to some senior friends and some creative trip trading.  The great thing about my two trips is that I get to fly with my friend Gail.  I have known Gail for years, back from when we served on the Ballot Committee for our Union, but we have never gotten to fly together..... until now!

The trip got off to a rocky start, when as we were preparing for departure to Heathrow, our 777 started leaking hydraulic fluid.  We wait for about two hours with a planeload of very patient people until the mechanics finally took the plane out of service.  We ended up leaving on another plane about four and a half hours late.  We finally made it to the UK and the hotel around noon.  I made a quick trip over to Sainsbury for my usual purchases before taking my nap.

Given the shortened layover time, Gail and I decided to meet in the lobby at about 5:30 and head out for a walk around the park.  The time change to DST mean't it wouldn't get dark until 7:30 or so and it was an absolutely beautiful day.

We walked down to Kensington Park and thru the public gardens that sit beyond Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived at one time.  There are signs everywhere that say DO NOT FEED SQUIRRELS, but after seeing how fat and friendly they were, I am guessing no one really pays attention to that.

We were shocked to see so much litter on the grass though so every time we passed something on the ground, we were picking it up and placing it in rubbish bins.

We stopped at Gloucester Arms for a round of brew.  We were given the treat of getting to see a crazy man walk down the street in nothing but underwear and an overcoat with a drink in his hand yelling at everyone.  One of the chaps in the pub said he was their local crazy guy.

As the sun started to set, we made our way back towards the hotel.  We passed Partridges, a kind of high end gourmet grocery store.  I love going in there.  Gail, who flies this trip every week had never heard of it, so we went in and looked around.  They have great pastries and cheeses, spreads, wine, etc.  She got a meat pie  to heat up for the flight home the next day.

We had planned to go to a place called Stanhope Arms for some traditional English food, but off the cuff mentioned a place called Ask, that I used to go to when I flew London during my Boston years.  Gail used to like going there too and I hadn't eaten there in 10 years or so.  We decided that was the place to go.  They have great Italian food.  Gail had a pizza and I had a mushroom and cheese calzone.

We wrapped up our day around 10:30pm or so and made our way back to the hotel. I ran into my purser Lisa and some of her friends who were on some of the other London flights (our base flies 3 a day this time of year) and joined them for a quick drink before retiring for the night.

Of course, we ended up being delayed the next day as our plane was late arriving from Miami.  We ended up spending about 30 minutes sitting in the departure lounge with the passengers  before our plane was ready for us.

On the flight over we had a cool guy in Business Class named Earl.  He was scheduled to be a passenger on the way home with us and when he arrived, he had Cadbury Chocolate Truffles for us.  They were very very good.

The delays really started to wear on us, but we were glad to finally get home.  We do it all over again next week.  Hopefully it will be another great trip, sans the delays.

Lenten Reflections

For Lent this year, I decided to give up the usual, desserts.  But last year I read an interesting article about christians who give up something more techno, like the internet or Facebook.  I found it intriguing at the time and shared it with an old college friend, Jenn.  We decided last year that a Facebook fast would be our goal for 2010.  I kind of forgot about it, and then mentioned it to Jenn in January and she was still game, so we went for it.  I tried to be responsible about my Facebook hiatus, giving everyone a heads up, selling the fish in my virtual Fishville aquarium so they wouldn't die, removing the app from my phone, etc. etc.

The fast is over, and post Lent, I am about 5 pounds lighter thanks to the lack of dessert and I was surprised at how easy it was to quit Facebook cold turkey.  In fact, I came to enjoy the simplicity.  I didn't realize how much time I was spending in the land of social networking, especially in the evenings as the day was winding down.  When Easter came, I logged in for the first time in 40 days and was OVERWHELMED with all the messages, friend requests, notifications, etc. that were waiting for me.  I think I had over 100 notifications from various Facebook apps!  It was almost easier to not have to worry about that.  I am still slowly working my way thru those, and finally managed to catch up with some people.  Of course it was a nice surprise to see a few friends who had surfaced while I was gone, including a friend from my early days in Sarasota (we're talking 20 plus years).

The one realization I had was that I did not see how I had come to use Facebook as my primary means of communication with so many people.  My next door neighbor, who like me is a flight attendant, and I commented on how we never heard from each other during my fast, and our houses are 15 feet apart!

So coming away from all this, I will try to use more email and phone calls to friends versus FB messaging and wall writing.  I'm glad I took this fast and think it will become one of my annual Lenten rituals.