Hello friends and family! Welcome to the blog and thanks for visiting. Throughout the next thirty days I am going to try to keep the blog up-to-date with posts about the trip. If I'm lucky, I may even be able to convince some of the other members of our motley bunch to post blog entries.
I will apologize in advance if the blog is unevenly weighted to my own sleep-deprived and rambling thoughts. I'll try to be coherent. Let’s get this blog started after all we have already begun to tread the globe.
To begin at the beginning I can say a few words about the flight and the waiting for the flight. First, as I was sitting in the C19 waiting area at O’Hare, an ebullient older man approached me and asked if I was from France. I explained that no, I was from Chicago on my way to Paris. He took my rather mechanical response as an invitation to sit down next to me. As indicated by the official-looking patch sewn onto his tan colored cap—not to mention also by his general age range—he was a WWII veteran. As we—mostly he—sat and chatted, he described his very first trip to Paris, which was under considerably more dangerous circumstances. As he as his fellow soldiers toured Paris in their army Jeep, they kept their eyes open for German tanks. He described one incident when he and his mates were crossing one of the famous bridges of Paris in a Jeep when they spotted a German tank on the other side of the river behind an embankment. He attributes their survival and the tank’s lack of aggressive maneuvering to the fact that the tank driver likely recognized that his time in Paris was coming to a close. As the gentleman explained, this was D-day and Paris was soon to be liberated.
We were late pushing back from the gate, not due to weather in Chicago, but due to delayed flights arriving from elsewhere. As the pilot explained, we could afford to wait for the additional passengers because the scheduled trip was going to take less time than normally allotted. We finally pushed back from the gate at 6:29 p.m. and were airborne by 6:48 p.m.
Airline food is widely joked about, but this food was ridiculous! I can hardly stand to recall the overcooked tortellini in congealed Alfredo (?) sauce. Shudder. I can usually eat just about anything, descriptions of which will likely follow as the month progresses, but this food was not meant to be eaten. This fact was made all the worse when we encountered some of the worst turbulence I have even flown through in a major aircraft. Sure, the little puddle-jumpers that take commuters from Cleveland to Kenosha may bounce up and down like a fisherman’s bobber, but one hopes for more stability in a trans-Atlantic flight. I could describe the leg from Newfoundland past the southern tip of Greenland as a roller coaster ride, but I must be clear. Not like the all-steel, sturdy, new roller coasters that pass over their tracks with great confidence. More like the all wooden roller coasters that avert disaster with every creak and rumble, the kind of roller coaster that makes you wonder, “Does this single safety bar across my lap truly provide the level of security needed to keep me from being hurled from the car and landing somewhere between the Belgian Waffle Hut and the man who guesses your weight?” Our flight eventually passed through the turbulence and we arrived safely in Paris.
After a morning of sending emails and running a few errands, Carole swept us off to her apartment where we could freshen up before dinner. After a wonderful dinner of duck and Belgian endives in a light sauce with raisins we arranged our temporary beds for another painfully short night. Our taxi was scheduled to arrive at 4 a.m.
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