THE RETURN TO WASHINGTON AND DERWOOD,
AFTER THE UNEXPECTED ADDED VENUE OF SAN ANTONIO
WAS WORKED IN FOR THE CLIMAX OF A VERY EVENTFUL TRIP, WITH TERROR AT
TWIN TOWERS HEADLINING THE START,
AND TWIN GRANDSONS CLIMAXING THE HAPPY FINISH!
Oct. 2, 2001
I am now on the CO 718 flight toward which I had driven after leaving Judy and the boys this morning, as they are each packing up some details before their trip to Florida this week. I may be able to reach them all at Gainesville at some point around the weekend, just as I take off for the ACS and Colorado.
I drove back without incident to IAH and turned in the Thrifty Rental agency Concorde for one of the better hundred dollar overnight's invested recently, although each of my flights seems to have carried a surcharge or two for changing dates (due to circumstances not necessarily of my won making) and the simpler details that have plagued me, such as the dyslexia for written numbers that chopped my PIN number from my One Pass account one digit short.
I got up early this morning on my twelve and a half hours jet lag from the
world's far side, and was therefore ready to feed and play with the boys even
changing a few diapers as Devin peed straight up on the changing table in a
fountain like his father used to do during changing. I took some additional
photos and packed up the Concorde to drive away toward Houston, and found a
remarkably empty Continental flight to Dulles with the loss of two hours off
the watch as I headed back East from coming all the way West from the Far East.
A woman behind me in the boarding line, looked over the tags on my summit pack
and asked where I was coming from. She was fascinated with the stories of where
I had been and what I had been doing, so she came over to sit by me in the whole
rows of empty seats on this aircraft, promising to have her husband who was
picking her up to drive to Alexandria, who would drop me at GWU as I told them
more stories along the way. She will be checking the web site and signing up
for a future flight on a similar excursion among the now nine Asian, two African
and one Mindanao Philippine expeditions scheduled in the next months. I will
have a brief interval of re-grouping and re-packing, probably spending the day
at Derwood tomorrow to run errands (post office mail pickup, haircut, run) after
dropping the two dozen rolls of film for processing into the GWU AVS tonight
for later sorting by the weekend. I will call Joe and possibly surprise him
with the offer of one more run after we had done our last pre-marathon long
run last Sunday before my leaving on this trip that was pushed back by global
events-possibly on the Saturday morning before I leave on Sunday morning on
my brief First Class flyer to get on with the conjoined itineraries that were
disjointed by these same events.