I know I promised regular updates and I will, but things need to converge for that to happen. Here are a few of my excuses.
Airplanes, especially all-night ones, are not conducive for typing. It is dark, I fly economy so there isn’t much room, and people around me are asleep. Add to that the WIFI costs a lot on an airplane, so for the 22 hours we were in the air, updates could not happen.
So, let my update you on the air travel part of the journey. You may have seen Sherry and I on Facebook with some of the cooler things we saw. Even before we left, we had unexpected issues. We looked at the carry-on rules, but one escaped us, the weight limit for all of them. My backpack was 14 kg and the limit was 8. My personal item, a second smaller backpack with computers, tablet, cords, book and bible, and a few other items. Limit was 3 kg and I was 10kg. And all our checked bags were at weight. Sherry’s carry-ons were even more challenging than mine. So we repacked, shifted, and adjusted our very well organized cases. We took out, weighed, took more out, weighed and . . . until we had everything within limits. One extra checked bag, $290 and one overweight bag. It was supposed to be $80, but they put our extra bag and overweigh on together. Score $80 savings.
We thought we had it, Seattle was in our rearview mirror. No, there was more. We had cash, a lot of cash, to take for projects. I dutifully filed my FinCen 105 Form with the Treasury. All I had to do was show my confirmation receipt and grab a snack. But wait. They wanted to count the money. Some of you know my wife is very organized. We broke up the wad into envelops, baggies, and parked everything for easy distribution. They had us take it all out and make one pile, well three piles, so they could run it through their counter. Our number and theirs didn’t quite match, but close enough for the boss, so with little time to get to the gate, we put it all in one big envelop, thank you PCFCU for that sealable bag. We have been busy, so we still have cash to sort and deliver.
The first flight to Nairobi was uneventful, twelve hours on a full plane, with decent food and little sleep. We got to the airport and disembarked. Because our next flight was the next morning, we had a motel and got transit visas. Our friend Patrick, whom you will meet in future updates, met us at 3am to take us to the motel, he had a room as well. There was trouble with the reservations, like there weren’t any. It was all worked out by the time we got there. Orbitz is working on what happened and refunding my money. As it turned out, the rooms were half when we paid there.
One last thing. Sherry and I were in grad school with a Kenyan. We have kept up with him, by we, I mean Sherry, for the 30+ years since we graduated. He wanted us to come to Kenya then, and we promised to do so. He met us the evening before we left, and we spent a couple of hours catching up. It was grand to see him.
I will have more, but we are heading into the outback, so nothing until Sunday or Monday. Thanks for reading this.