...And Miles to go before we sleeeeep.....

Is it only 1:30?!

For those with a need to know, we have arrived safely at our first destination -- Vancouver, Canada, which we could have driven to in about 2 hours. It was a pretty spectacular flight in a small propeller plane over the San Juans. We noticed that those of you in Port Townsend where under a light cloud cover this morning around 8. All around you was sunny and clear. We have had 9 hours to pass here (ho-hum) and only about half of those are gone.

Mom and I are holding up pretty well, once we got over the shock of paying $8 for a hamburger and then realizing the American dollar is actually worth LESS than the Canadian right now! The lady held up my $10 bill and said: "This is $9.00." Can't get much more blunt than that. Needless to say, we've bought nothing else besides lunch.

Basil had a near breakdown around 9AM, probably having just realized on some primordial level that he had been up since about 5:30AM. For some reason the idea of going through security for the second time just wasn't the frosting on his cake this morning. Nevertheless, he made it through alright and is still truckin'. Yes, we have another Energizer Bunny in the family besides me!

I was rather excited about the prospect of yet again re-arranging our packing so that the 4 quart-sized bags filled with liquids which theoretically weigh about a pound each (but in reality seem to be about 3# each) could be broken up into the bags with rollers. Imagine my disappointment when the thought crossed my mind: "Surely we don't have to go through a THIRD security check in England, do we?" Of course, we do! I am just thankful I thought of it beforehand and we didn't have to scramble through our 3 main bags in between planes at Heathrow trying to retrieve all those cute little bottles of shampoo and hand cleanser.

Emma wants to keep all the empty shampoo bottles for her American girls. Yeah, right! (Sorry, Rachel Urner!) Mom and Emma did defy express orders this afternoon and purchased 2 keyrings. I guess you only live once....

We are hanging out for another delightful 4 hours in the airport before heading to the next plane. As airports go, our friend Mark Warns was right, Vancouver is pretty darn nice. But there's only so many times you can admire the lovely indoor gardenscaping before you realize most of the plants are actually plastic, and you begin to think of how many germs are floating in the rippling "river" that is filled with coins from all over the world that your son is putting his hands in.... On the upside, I've had plenty of time to organize all my papers and the day's activities largely aren't any more taxing than taking Basil to the bathroom. We met some Japanese people whom we couldn't really communicate with, but Basil did some pictures for the ladies who were enaptured with him, making them even more enraptures. One of the older gentlemen brought over a scrap of paper with some Japanese writing for Emma. Of course I couldn't understand it at all, except the numeric date. But he had happened to use an old music score. Now THAT I could read. So I walked back over and sang the melody to him. He was thrilled. The universal language. A Hallmark moment. I got that he is a composer and that they played some of his music at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Probably the highlight of our morning was when we landed here. The stewardess was saying: "Thank you for flying Horizon air. Please remain seated blah-dee blah-dee blah dee blah.... and please refrain from smoking... for the rest of your life." There was dumbfounded silence for a split second then many of us started laughing. It's a joke here. Were we landing in Rome or Greece, it might incite a riot, I suppose.

Know that we are all well. I think we'll all be in good frame to sleep on the next flight. I hope we do. We land in England at about noon their time, which is something like 3AM for us. We have 1 hour to make our connecting flight to Rome, arriving there at 4PM their time which is about 7AM our time.

I believe our hotel has a computer. If so, I'll write again from there. If not, I won't be able to post for maybe a week.

Thanks all for your well-wishes!

From warmish Canada. Tired, bored, but doin' just fine. Macrina