Day 1 travel

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Anyone who has ever traveled with us will find the following unbelievable. We left this morning ONTIME and did not FORGET a single item!

Every year we leave late and 95% of the time we have to drive back to get something. Once, I left my phone home and had to drive back. Once, Chris left his entire suitcase home and we had to have some friends rush drive it to Detroit. Today we forgot NOTHING, or at least we think we forgot nothing!

So the day dawned bright and sunny with a temperature under 80 degrees predicted. We left the house without a hitch. Well there was one hitch.

It seems a few weeks ago our nephew Vince got married to the lovely Angela. Due to a strange series of events the wedding card we prepared to give them as a gift somehow found its way into the trash and thus they did not get our gift. Well one thing led to another and we still did not mail the card with gift until today.

Well, almost today. You see we had no stamps at home. So we headed out to the bank and to the drug store to get money and stamps. The money was no problem; the stamps however we a BIG problem. No one had any for sale. So with deep regret we ask Vincent and Angela for forgiveness. As we fly off to Spain your gift is sitting in the car at the Detroit airport waiting for a stamp!

So we drove to Detroit, no ticket received, and arrived with time to spare. Dropped the car off at the parking lot and took the bus to the departure gate. At check in we liearned that traveling with a BRAND NEW passport is a challenge!

My passport was set to expire in February so I got a new one. I input the passport number as required at the online checking and got a boarding pass printed at home. i repeated the same actions for Cathy and also printed a boarding pass.

Unfortunately when we got to the aitport to checkin the luggage, my passport was NOT in the system! The kind Delta Administrator spend 10 minutes reentering the passport information and assured us the passport was "good to go". Famous last words. Maybe good but not to go anywhere.

We headed to the Delta club for some food and rest as we had 45 minutes before boarding. We headed to the gate and since I have priority boarding priviledges we boarded early, or tried to board early.

it seems my passport was not in the system, still. So once again the nice Delta administrator spend 5 minutes dutifully entering all my passport information and once again we were told, "you are good to go." I am starting to fear those words.

We boarded the flight, a Boeing 757 300 stretch and took our aisle seets at the farthest end of the plane possible. The flight was full to capacity, so we were glad to have aisle seats across from each other.

As usual I fell asleep and Cathy read a magazine or two and we passed the 2 hour flight to Atlanta. We dined on the finest fast food, Chinese Wok time, and headed once again to the club to pass the next 2 hours away readying ourselves for the overnight flight to Barcelona, Spain where we will hook up with Rick and Alla at 9:30 AM Saturday.

I will close for now and open back up in SPAIN!!!!

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