Living Right

Author's note:  This post covers the day of July 8th.  I wrote it on the plane the morning of July 9th.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but with the luck I’ve been having I must be living right.  First there was the hotel suite.  Nicest La Quinta room I've ever stayed in, even better than the one time I had a LQ room with a jacuzzi.  Then things got even better.

Yesterday was a travel day, and as a result, one of the least eventful of the days on the trip.  I woke up at the hotel, had breakfast, finished packing, watched the first set and a half of the Wimbledon final between Federer and Murray, caught the van to the airport at 11.

My driver was the same guy that drove me to the airport to catch the bus to Orlando a week and a half earlier.  He gave me an, “I told you so” earful when I told him how we were worked over by Cruzeiro.  But then we moved on to the football clinic that Spain put on Italy in the Euro final.

While checking my bags, the ticket agent observed that I was tall and asked me if I would like to sit in the exit row…for free.   Yes, please!  The flight from Miami to Atlanta was uneventful.

In Atlanta I had just enough time to change terminals, grab a sandwich and get to my flight to Dusseldorf.  On the plane the coach seats are set up in a 2-3-2 combination across the plane.  My seat is on the right side of the center section of seats that is three seats wide.  I was the first one to sit in my row and the plane was looking a little empty.  The woman across the aisle from me on the right noted the emptiness of the flight to me, and we struck up a conversation.

This….woman…is…awesome.  Her name is Josephine Hughes.  Called “Jo”.  She’s roughly 84 by my calculations because she said she graduated college in 1950.  She says she’s visiting a friend in Germany, I say I’m visiting a friend in Holland.  I say I’m going to Croatia, she says she was there a month earlier.  Oh, and she’s planning a trip to Barcelona in October.  She’s been to Thailand, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, basically all of Europe, other places that I’m sure I’m forgetting, and not just the big cities, but she’s talking about small cities along the way.  I mention driving through the Austrian Alps, and she’s already been down the Grossglockner Alpine Road.  She’s talking about planning trips to Turkey, Chile, and Argentina.  Oh, and I mention I graduated from Maryland, she's a Terp too!  She met her husband there and graduated with a degree in home economics.  She currently lives in Richmond.  Most of her travel doesn’t include hotels, but visiting and living with families, which is an amazing way to travel.  She inspires me to think that just because I get older doesn’t mean I can’t continue to go on new adventures.

Oh, and noone ever did sit in that row of seats with me.  So when I wanted to sleep I was literally able to lie down across the seats like a bench, and use two of the blankets and two of the pillows.  Best sleep I’ve ever had on an airplane, bar none.

So, I write this in my seat as we are 15 minutes from landing in Dusseldorf.  Excited to land and begin the next leg of this amazing adventure.  And if Jo is any indication of what I can do as I get older, there will be many adventures more to come.