Day 1 - December 31, 2008

This is the day we have been waiting for for months; the day we begin our vacation in Ecuador. Our Spanish is pitiful but it will have to do.
We arrive at the airport with the usual stressed out feeling you get when you know you have to board an airplane in the U.S. In the "Land of the Free" we have security like we live in a closed-border nation. The Patriot Act, which is not patriotic but illegal, has made us all prisoners and guilty until proven innocent. Each time I go to the airport there is more and more security "for our own good." All of our bags have to go through security and a bottle of water is considered a potential terrorist threat.
At the Phoenix airport, which is notorious for harassing law-abiding citizens; there are so many security people at the check in, they are stumbling over each other. A valuable use of taxpayer money, I am sure. We go through Security and the big, white woman who could be mistaken for a linebacker from the L.A. Rams grabs my backpack and says "I have to look through this." "Ok," I say. I mean, I can't object, right? So, she proceeds to rifle through my belongings making me feel violated. She takes out a jar of shea nut butter and two, unopened bottles of Muscle Milk. They do their best to starve you at the airport so this was required sustenance. Because they look like material for making bombs, I assume, the linebacker tells me she needs to keep them. Oh, by the way, she also adds that she is tired and has had a long day -as if I should care while I know she is pilfering my things. I explain the containers are unopened. After she confers with some of the other drones she insists they are dangerous and keeps them. By then I am almost hyperventilating so I remove myself before they lock me up and later find me dead like some other poor, unfortunate woman who crossed their path. I am in tears while I contemplate the idiocy of thinking this is a free country. Other countries may have oppressive policies but at least they don't pretend to be free.

On the plane we squeeze into the seats and attempt to put our bags under the seat in front of us. This should be quite simple but it isn't. The seats are so low that only about 1/3 of the bag goes under while the other 2/3 is lying right where your feet should be. Now this becomes difficult because for the next 3-1/2 ours we will have to find some place for our feet.
As we get "comfortable" I notice in front of us is a woman with a baby and a little boy sitting directly in front of me. I am concerned the baby will cry the whole way while I thought little of the child in front of me. We were waiting and waiting in the runway for take off when, all of the sudden, the child bursts out "I gotta pee!" loud enough for the whole plane to hear. Well, if I were his mother I would want to crawl under the seat too low and disappear. But not her. While bouncing baby on her knee she calmly tells the "I gotta pee" kid to wait until the plane takes off. So, he quietly waited and waited and we just sat there, not moving. Then another outburst "I gotta pee!" and earth mother calmly tells him again to wait.
Finally, we take off and we are on our way. Baby is darling and quiet but not so the "I gotta pee" kid. It seemed he had to pee throughout the whole flight and he wanted to make sure everyone knew it. Earth mother stayed calm. He also thought his chair was a trampoline so, as I was attempting to read or eat, my tray proceeded to bounce rhythmically along. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful and baby was an angel until we landed and, again waited and waited in the runway. I began to pull out my bag from under the seat. While eying with despair my sweater that was on top of the back pack and discovering the "I gotta pee" kid had spilled red punch all over it; we detected an odor. Well, that was surely a weapon of a terrorist because the smell was so bad. Then we heard Earth mother cooing at Rocko; that's what she named this Gerber baby. We realized then it was not a terrorist threat after all; just Rocko's way of saying farewell. When Earth Mother stood up with Rocko and the "I gotta pee" kid I discovered he had hair down to his shoulders. He had exclaimed throughout the trip that he could not wait to see Daddy. Somehow I could just see Daddy waiting for Earth Mother, Rocko and the "I gotta pee" kid with the long hair on his big Harley with a side car.

When we arrived in Atlanta for an overnight layover; it was quite cold. It was New Year's Eve. I was tired and my cherry-stained sweater did not help. I was NOT going to wear that on the train to the hotel. I had worn a nice pair of blue slacks with a casual white blouse for traveling. I was cold. We found the train. That was easy. We found out our hotel was basically on the other side of Atlanta from the airport. No wonder it was cheap. We called them to pick us up while we were on the train and they told us to call them when we got there. That didn't sound too good. They assured us they were only five minutes away.
We arrived at the train station and it was about 48 below out - or at least it felt like it. We called them. We waited and waited. My feet were killing me and I was frozen and getting grumpy. We called again. It seemed they were having a wedding and they forgot us. After about 1/2 hour they arrived. The young man apologized profusely. His southern hospitality won me over and I forgave him.
The hotel receptionist's were wonderful. Again, amazing southern hospitality. We ordered room service and met the New Year 2009 in our Atlanta hotel room.