Jul 19, 2005

11:00am I’m sitting at the S’barro seating area at the Dayton International Airport. I’ve got a peach smoothiethat I’m sipping on ($3.80 from Boston Stoker). It’s very tasty. The object of today’s flying? Get to Rome!

[Present day Trina cutting in here. This is the first entry in my paper journal that I kept during the trip. I’m making corrections as I go, but so far, am terribly faithful to it. You can tell by the sheer tedium I’m writing about. I’ll start cutting out the tedious comments as I go as well, or you’ll all be sleeping on your keyboards.]

Unfortunately my last journal was left in a Big Boy in Michigan back in April, so I’ve no idea what I last wrote about in my print journal. My electronic journal is a bit more up to date. [That’s what she thinks!] I decided against bringing my laptop on this trip because of the carrying issue, electrical issue, and lack of ‘net issue. I’ve got lots of electronics with me, however. So boredom won’t ever be an issue. [It wasn’t]

So, what’s up with this trip? Well, back in October ’03 our BW3’s group first talked about renting a villa in Tuscany. We’ve done a lot of plotting and planning since then and 18 of us are going to Roma for 3 days and the villa for 7 days.

I’m the only one taking US Air to Rome – most of the rest are taking Northwest. Even judiang (who is my roomie) is taking the Detroit->Rome leg of it. I’ll be on the same flight as everyone for the way back, however.

[The next several paragraphs are a summary of what we intended to do on the trip. Since I’ll be reporting on what we actually did, it seems a bit silly to include that here too, so I skipped ’em.]

2:20pm Now sitting near my gate (I think) at Philly’s airport. The place is practically deserted at the moment since most international flights leave at night. Mine’s at 6:10pm, so I’ve got a bit of a layover.

5:10pm Still at gate and so is our plane (has been for some time). Judi, meanwhile, got her times confused and left for the airport late. I’m hoping the lack of contact since her call means she’s in the air now to Detroit. Please let it be so!

5:53pm Good news! Judi’s luggage made the flight! Bad news – Judi’s body did not! Crap! So, she’s going to try and get on standby to Amsterdam and then from there on to Italy. If things work out, she can be in Rome by 3pm. Wow! Poor Judi! I’m hoping she can get there OK.

In the Good News camp again, we’re on the Airbus A330 rather than the Boeing 767. That means we get the ability to pick our own inflight entertainment! Sweet. There’s even a remote control! And the adapter for my headphones fits the jacks. Still dunno how well they work. [Got Magnavox noise cancellation headphones for the plane – only $35 at Walmart.]

Movie choices include Hitch and Robots, so I think I’ll pick them. Who knows what Northwest will offer for the ride back.

Oh, interesting sign of the times: The old No Smoking lighted signs have been replaced with “Please turn off electronic devices” signs.

Captain’s just welcomed us. We should be pushing off shortly.

6:25pm Departing a little late – a connecting flight arrived late, but we’re all here now! And we’re off to Rome!

7:00pm Ha! Spoke too soon. Yup, we’re still on the ground, trying to get to the front of the queue.

Now, although this journal entry hasn’t actually talked about the arrival to Rome, I’m going to include a couple of photos from Rome. There will be more in the next post when I write about the arrival.

Judi and Trina in Vatican City. If you look closely, elsaf, you’ll see the Pope in the background, left. He’s spying on us, but we just ignored him.

I liked this particular monument. I like heffalumps. And woozles. No woozles on this one, however. And what’s with all the Egyptian needles? The Romans were obsessed, I think.

In other news, work was a bitch today (and yesterday), but my new video card (for my new computer) arrived today and installed nicely. I can now play City of Heroes on my new PC. Also, Semagic is able to detect music from QCD – woot! Oh, and while listening to Information Society, I discovered they did a cover of Abba’s “Lay All Your Love on Me.” Heh, never noticed before.