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.

Interludes In Miami

Author’s Note:  This post covers the day of July 7^th.   I wrote it on the morning of July 10^th in Smith’s apartment.

For a third straight day, I had to get up early.  But that I didn’t really mind, because I was going SCUBA DIVING!  Got up at 6:30, shaved, packed my scuba stuff and cameras, grabbed some McD’s and started the drive down to Key Largo.  I had made this reservation 2 weeks earlier, and wrote down the time and place I needed to be at, but had lost it.  So I was really going off of memory, hoping that 8 AM was the time I was supposed to be there.  Thank god that sometimes my brain can hold its own, as I got it right.

Got fitted for a wetsuit and the other equipment and hopped on the boat.  I started talking with a woman, Sharon, originally from Australia but now living in London.  Here’s Sharon:

Our dive guide, Kevin, also paired us up, so that worked out well.  Here’s Kevin:

The dives were awesome, much warmer water than the Ginnie Springs refresher dive I did a few weeks earlier.  The fish were incredibly colorful.  On the first dive we saw a sea turtle, a HUGE puffer fish, some fish that I called Maryland Fish for being red, white, black, and yellow, colorful parrot fish, an eel, and some beautiful swaying forests of sea plants.  We came up to change out tanks and went back down for a second dive.  On the second dive we saw a huge lobster, some trumpet fish, and one of those schools of fish that almost seems to dance in big choreographed movements.  I don’t have pictures of much because I mostly took video.  I'll see if I can post any of that to youtube later.

Here’s me:

And here’s one of the good pictures.  I was trying to catch that big brilliant blue guy down in the bottom right hand corner.

After scuba diving, I drove back to Miami, got a HUGE Pollo Tropical lunch, and took my laundry to a Laundromat, where literally NOONE spoke English.  Did laundry, got screwed over by having to put 5 dollars on a Laundromat card and being left with 4 on it, so I gave it away.  Packed up, mostly, and went to meet my UF club soccer buddy Josh at a bar in downtown Miami.  The bar sits on the river, which I didn’t even know Miami had.  I tried to take pictures of the river with my phone, but the phone is terrible in low light.  It was great to catch up with him. 

We also saw the big Silva-Chonnen (did I spell that right?) UFC fight.  I’m not a UFC fan and neither is Josh, but his friends are.  Watching Silva win felt like watching a Mayweather fight.  I’m not rooting for him, but I know he’s going to win, so there’s almost no point in rooting against him.

I said my goodbye to Josh and drove back to the hotel to get some rest.