Kevin's Mantra

The hordes descended on Stansted.

 Even if you love to travel, you realize there are always miseries in moving from place to place that you can't avoid. For example, a few days before we left Sea-Tac, the airport experienced a cyberattack that disrupted their systems and resulted in multiple flight delays. Even though most of the problem had been fixed, we were still advised to arrive at the airport more than three hours before our flight. We  did--and I have never seen so many people at Sea-Tac. But then, we did fly on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend.

When we departed from Stansted Airport outside of London for our flight to Porto, we experienced more crowds and long waiting. Our flight took off two hours late. 

It's never fun to wait in a crowded airport. You just have to go with the flow, which is why nearly every time we enter an airport to go somewhere, Kevin repeats his mantra of resignation: "OK," he says, "My time is worth nothing. My life is worth nothing." It can seem that way.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Our Trip

Image
  Now that we're back home, what thoughts do we have about our trip? First, it could scarcely have been better. It was everything that we hoped and more. We did have a few regrets, but those had to do with the fact that our plans were revised because this trip was supposed to be with our friends Greg and Kay. We had planned a trip to England with them in 2016, and we had to cancel, and then, in 2020, when we had everything booked, a certain virus meant we had to cancel everything. So we were sad that they could not go this time. Our other regret is that we weren't able to see all of our friends who live in and near Europe, such as our Danish friends and my Italian friend, Fiorenza, whom I haven't seen in years. We also had hoped to meet up with our friend Kathryn, who lives in Morocco. But that's an excuse for further trips, right? I almost titled this post, "We Haven't Lost It!" because Kevin and I both were pleased that everything went as planned. After ...
Read more

Our Return to "This Scepter'd Isle"

Image
Our walk took us by Windsor Lock on the Thames Path. Yes, we're back in the land of Shakespeare again, not to mention the land of cottage pie, bangers and mash, and that "heart attack on a plate," the full English breakfast. We've been pining for the latter since our last trip here was cancelled in 2020. (And we all know what happened in 2020.) But when we arrived on Sunday, September 1, it was too late in the day to satisfy our longing, so after dropping off our bags at our Airbnb in Old Windsor, we chose to head along the Thames Path. That Kevin! He couldn't resist photographing me next to the arrow! We encountered a few dog-walkers, joggers, and bikers along the way. A sign before the entrance to the path reminded us we were, indeed, back in England. Although some of the words were worn off, we smiled to see a familiar warning: "No fly tipping." And no, it does not mean giving small monetary gifts to flies! It's a typical British sign advising tha...
Read more

A Stopover in Dartmoor

Image
Ever since I read The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was young,   I have been fascinated with Dartmoor. In the past, we have spent a lot of time walking on the moors to prehistoric standing stones and stone circles--some older than Stonehenge. It's always been a magical place for me. Once, when Kevin and I were walking up to a tor, one of the stone outcroppings above the moorland, a mist descended. We could see only a short distance. Suddenly, we heard  horses's hooves pounding through the silence. Very quickly, a man and woman in riding gear emerged from the mist on two large brown horses. "Halloo," they cried, and almost immediately dissolved into the mist as quickly as they had appeared. I remember turning to Kevin and asking him, "Were they real?" We didn't have a lot of time to spend in Dartmoor this time, because we wanted to focus on places in Cornwall that we hadn't been to before. But we were at Cadson Manor a day before Shirley arrived, a...
Read more