DAY 1 - TRAVELLING DAY

Regina Airport - Off on another Adventure

Juanita drove me to the Regina airport very early Saturday morning.  After we had breakfast in the restaurant there, I headed through Security with no problem.  As I was waiting in the boarding area, I got a called to the podium, "Ralph Courtnage, could you come to the podium please."  The agent asked for my passport, checked it, and advised me that I had to go through Security again.  She took me to Security and I had to go through the whole process again.  Apparently I had been flagged for a full pat down for some reason (just random I guess) but they didn't do it.  This time they did a complete pat down, checked through my bags, got the electronic sniffer thing out, checked all around the laptop, and then they checked the palms of my hands and around my waist, etc.  After that, everything was fine and I got on the airplane.

We got into Minneapolis-St. Paul ahead of schedule, which was good actually as I had a little bit of a tight layover there.  As it turned out though, the flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Atlanta was delayed by 15 minutes.  This caused me a little stress as I only had a one-hour layover in Atlanta and it is a big airport. I was concerned 45 minutes or so wouldn't be enough but we got on the plane and the flight ended up getting into Atlanta early which put everything on schedule really.  By the time I got off the plane, reclaimed my luggage and then put it back on the conveyor again for the next flight, go through Security again, by the time I got to my next gate in Atlanta with 30 minutes to boarding, there was not a bathroom in sight.  I would have had to go all the way back to the main corridor to find a bathroom, and I had to pee pretty bad!  I decided to hold it and go to the bathroom when I got on the airplane. So I got on the airplane for the 4.5-hour flight to Bogota; I'm in the window seat and there's two people beside me.  One of them doesn't speak any English and one was an elderly woman and I wondered if I should disturb them. I held it and I held it and I held it!  Then I got to talking to the young fellow beside me; he is from Korea but going to go to school in the States and is trying to learn his Spanish.  He had a sheet of Spanish phrases and I had mine and told him I'm trying to learn Spanish too, he got a chuckle out of that.  Soon the woman on the aisle seat got involved by helping us with our Spanish.  We got talking about "¿Dónde está el baño?" which gave me a good opportunity to say "actually, I have to use the bathroom."  We had a good meal on that flight.  There was a bright red sauce on the chicken I had ordered so true to form, the first thing I did was dump it all over my shirt, so now I have a dirty shirt with a bright red sauce mark on it.

Bogota Airport

I arrived in Bogota, nice airport there, went through Customs, etc. By the time I got my luggage it was about 10:45 p.m. and I noticed that the boys' (Todd and Ryan) flight in from Dallas was scheduled to arrive early.  Just to back up a bit, this trip was planned by Ryan's wife, Olga, to commemorate his 40th birthday.  It was supposed to be a surprise that Todd and I would be going on the trip with him.  He learned in August (when he had to go for Yellow Fever shot, etc.) where he was going but thought that Olga was going with him.  It did come out though eventually that Todd was going, not Olga, but he had no idea that I would be joining them.  Anyway, when Todd and Ryan came down to claim their luggage, I came up behind Ryan, poked him and said "¿dónde está el baño?"  He turned around and saw me and laughed and laughed.  He had a pretty strong suspicion I was going to be there.  The story goes like this.  Apparently Ryan was in Chloe and Adele's bedroom at home and said to them "So, you girls are going to be going to go visit Grandma and Grandpa in Moose Jaw for one of the weeks that I'm away."  Chloe says "Well, we're going to be visiting Grandma but Grandpa is going to be travelling with you."  Ha, ha.

So we got our bags and headed to the taxi which is supposed to run between 16,000 to 18,000 pesos at the max.  He takes us down to the Casa Platypus and I suggested to Todd he should leave him a tip.  Todd said "what about 200?"  And I said "don't be so cheap" as I thought Todd meant 200 pesos.  Todd handed the guy 200,000 pesos, hahaha.  Todd misread the meter, he thought it said 187,000 when in fact it said 18,700.  The guy said "no, no, no" and gave Todd 150,000 pesos back and kept 50,000 for himself.  Ryan and I got a big chuckle out of that.

That's it for Day 1.