July 9th & 10th

 I was on my way to see GD#3 in Aurora with my son when he made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Everlovin' was planning on coming down to get me that night after work. I was a little worried because it meant he would be very tired after working all day and then driving the 2 hrs to get me and the 2 hrs back cause we needed to be at the airport at 9:30 or so. My son said that Aurora was pretty close to where Everlovin' lives near the border of Toronto and Markham so he could drop me off and save Everlovin from having to make the trip. It also meant I could worry less about his heart and the fatigue he would be feeling with the time change between Ontario and Alberta.

So instead of spending the night traveling
dinner was provided by my MIL and I got to sit out under the gazebo and see all the pretty flowers my BIL has grown.

I need to say before I go any further that I had never been on a jet before, I'd ridden in a fixed wing so it wasn't totally strange. I was beyond excited and nervous, first to be going into a real airport, and second for riding in a jet (Airbus320).

So much to tell, all exciting to me but maybe not so much you. E showed me how to measure my bags to make sure they were the right size, and we checked the big suitcase. When our flight was called they asked people to put their carry-ons into stowage but we didn't.

We then had to go through the metal detector. I had to hand over both my bags and go through them, thankfully I didn't have any problems though E had to go through them a couple of times because of his tools.

On the other side, they opened our bags searching for Contraband, luckily the only thing I had was a pair of scissors which I lost because they were a cm too long, I'm just glad I had my backup pair.

We sat and waited what felt like hours before our flight was called. We waited in the waiting area. Our tickets were standby tickets so they had to assign us our seats before takeoff

E and I were in the same row on the plane. He got a window seat so he switched with me so I had the window and he was on the aisle; it was my first time after all and he was being nice. Love that man of mine!

This was just before we started to taxi to lift off. Because we were at the tail end of the plane the wing kinda got in the way of the view a little.

Once in the air, I watched out my window for a while til we got above the clouds. I tried to get photos and if any turned out I will share them on Facebook.

During the rest of the 4-hour trip, I read and watched our fellow passengers. I saw a family group standing around a row of seats I'm assuming the seated ones were elders but I couldn't see their faces.

My seatmates were a couple of age with me so we mainly ignored each other. There was the proverbial kid in front of us that kept pushing back on the seat and shaking the table my tablet was on.

In front of me was a screen on which I could keep track of how close we were to our destination, at the one-hour out mark I put my stuff away and got a few winks.

 

After touchdown, it was a simple process although waiting for our big bag on the carousel worried me a bit. We went and got our car from the rental place. That was fun (not) we went to the window we thought we were supposed to go sent to another one and then were looked after by this nice lady who was just beginning a second shift.

We found the car and headed out to the hotel. After getting our room we went out to get dinner. For the first time in years, I had dinner at the Olive Garden. Delicious as always!

Our hotel room was literally exactly what I would like my tiny house to be with a kitchenette, laundry, and a breakfast nook so we had space for both of us to have a desk. It was absolutely perfect!

After relaxing and doing our games we went to sleep. I slept so well that night!