Today’s the Day

May 25, 2016 – After almost two years on Maui, it took a lot for me to let go. This trip isn’t like my vacation to Vancouver, Arizona and Mexico that I took with Larra last February. This time I’m leaving for four months, and I’m going to travel over 25,000 miles.

Letting go, making my reservations, and actually doing it has been a real challenge for me.

When I got up this morning, still on Maui, the sky was unusually overcast, and it was chilly. About noon it started to rain, and the rain continued until around 5 p.m.

At five the rain let up, so I went over to the Catholic church for dinner. Usually it’s pretty good – chicken, pot roast, pasta with great sauces. But tonight it was a traditional Canadian dish that I outgrew as a kid – Macaroni and Cheese. On the way home the rain started again.

I thought to myself how much this is like Vancouver weather, and it’s as if the Universe is telling me that I might as well go to Vancouver, the weather won’t be any different. I found it pretty funny, and accepted it as synchronicity.

But I’m going to do it. My plane takes off at 11 p.m. tonight, and I’ll be in Vancouver tomorrow morning.

May 26 – Thursday Morning: I had to change planes in Los Angeles. I was lucky; my connecting flight was at the next gate over from where we landed.

But as soon as they pushed us back from the gate, the pilot came on the intercom and said, “I’m sorry, but the control tower just declared a communications emergency and the airport is closed. Hopefully it’ll only be 15 minutes.”

Stories of people trapped in a plane, as I was, trapped for hours, went through my head.

Looking out the window, it was something to see; every plane, truck, trolley, every vehicle at the airport stopped. All motion ceased. It was eerie.

Ten minutes later the pilot came back on the intercom, declared all was well, and we started our taxi to the runway. We had nine planes in front of us for takeoff, because of the brief closure, but once we were airborne it was great. The sun was shining, the skies were clear, and in my window seat I had a great view of the California coast as we flew northward. “My, my,” I thought, “This is going to be nicer than Maui.” Ha!

True to form for Vancouver, when we were about 200 miles out, the clouds built up and I didn’t see the ground again until we came out of the bottoms, just a couple miles from the runway.

And, typical to my previous experiences with Vancouver, it was cold, damp and raining.

Hey, when it starts off so gloomy, things can only get better!