Some of the Things I Hate about Air Travel, Part II

It has been four years and five days since I wrote Some of the Things I Hate about Air Travel, Part I.

Here is Part II.

I always have a time, shortly before I leave on any vacation, whether it's to the family cottage, or to visit cousins in Rochester, or going to Buffalo with my sisters, or overseas, that I wish I had never agreed to go on a vacation in the first place.  I guess I'm a bona fide homebody.  I like to stay home.  I like to be in my house or garden.   I am not an agoraphobic person - I just prefer to be home and to avoid the hustle and bustle of travel.

For overseas trips, the hustle and bustle of travel starts way before I even put my bags in my car for the drive across town (that I will save for another post!) to make my way to the airport.   There is hidden H&B (hustle and bustle) in a number of pre-trip activities: getting new shoes, finding clothes that fit, decisions that must be made about packing (how many shirts, sox, gidgies, etc), decisions about where to sit on the airplane, letting the airlines know that I am a vegan, etc.

My sister is taking care of most of this for me, and I am grateful, but it still occupies a significant amount of headspace, this H&B.

Then when we get to the airport, there is the H&B of getting the bags out at the departure stop - Dave will drop us off - going in to the departures level, finding our flight, hooking up with our gang (hope to have dinner with Heather, and friend from the previous trip), and then redistributing everyones soccer stuff among each other's bags.

The capper has to be the part where we must pass through security.  Off come the shoes, the belt if wearing one, the jewellery, the money belt, etc.   Then the metal detector, then the pat down (last time I got felt up pretty thoroughly right in front of everyone), then standing and waiting as the security person swabs the handles of my bag looking for gun powder residue.   I am certain that airport security could be more efficient if they engaged in some serious profiling.   A sixty year old nearly-retired school teacher - not much of a security risk.   Then there is the H&B of putting your shoes on while your stuff is coming through the x-ray machine, and you fear you are holding others up.

This year I will be taking my travel cane through, and now that I have a healed-but-still-awkward-to-walk-on-formerly-broken foot, I will be limping and slow.  And I won't give a rat's ass if I hold up the line!

The Generosity of Scarborough Blizzard

Long-time readers of my blog will know that before my previous trip to Rwanda I wrote to several local soccer clubs asking for donations of used soccer equipment and used balls etc.  Of all of the clubs I wrote to, only the Scarborough Blizzard club replied.   The generosity of the head of that club, Michelle Cole-Kennedy, was utterly overwhelming.  She gave me uniforms and balls and shin-guards to give away to children in Rwanda.   We gave the equipment to a local priest, who gave it to his sister who runs an orphanage.  I have posted pictures of two soccer teams wearing the uniforms on an earlier post.

Well, Michelle came through again!   Last night I went to meet her at the Blizzard's club headquarters.  Again, such generosity from Michelle!   She gave me uniforms( jerseys, shorts, socks and goal keeper shirt), balls, shin guards, adult-size  polo-shirts (great for gifts for our hosts and for soccer coaches), and some extra child-sized shirts.  I was, again, totally overwhelmed.

I might add that I wrote to Nike as well, to see if they had any soccer balls they could donate to the cause, even used equipment.    I didn't hear back from Nike, not even a note to say that they could not help.