Marcus,Miracles Live Music Capital of World

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Geo: 30.2676, -97.743

Robert notes:

We spent four or five days in Austin taking care of health stuff, getting some things for our trip and visiting relatives.

Saw some friends off on their trip on Amtrak from Houston to Alpine and return.

Visited Robert's mother and brother and sister, also saw a couple of friends and talked
travel. They have also been to Costa Rica several times, had told us
about Montezuma where we will stay about two weeks and love. They will
begoing to New Zealand where we have been twice.

We were planning on taking a taxi to the airport since we were leaving after most were off to work when my nephew Marcus offered to take us to the airport, which was wunderbar~! Thanks so much Marcus!


In line to board in Austin this am, frantically trying to suspend our expensive internet data account until we get back from Costa Rica.

Was supposed to be easy.... on the myverizon website but there was a glitch so had to call customer service and took three tries to get through the automated fail. Meh.
Laura was nervous about all this try and retrying, and finally
she says they have called our section and we have to get in line to
board.!!!! Stat.

Gathered up my camera equip bag and daypack , made it on to the plane to my seat, when all of a sudden I remembered that I had put the laptop on a ledge. Looked in my bag, and sure enough, it was not there.

Went against the flow of fellow passengers to the front of the plane
and got ground person who was standing in the door preventing me from
deplaning to help. She called the checkin counter. I told her if the
agent looked to the right he would see it above the trash can on a
ledge. Luckily it had not yet walked away the agent brought it to me.

Screening Sucks
Still amazes me what that all the Great War On Terrah TSA stuff is such a epic joke -- on the American taxpayer. Follow the money.....

WiFi on the Airline
American Airlines now has inflight pay wifi service now, and that's how this is being delivered to you.

Our free credit card bonus offer air miles tickets have us flying to
JFK and change planes on way to CR, instead of a direct four hour flight
from Austin. No worries, though, we LOVE to fly. Of course the guilt
associated with our carbon footprint nags at my conscience. I wonder
if there is a 12 step group for the travel addicted ?

Had a layover and used a charging station to charge up laptop and cell phone. Used the wifi hotspot on our Boost Mobile android phone .

When we got ready to board our flight from JFK to Costa Rica we had noticed the boarding pass said "priority boarding". Now what did that mean. It meant we got to go to the front of the line along with the first class and business class people. This is very nice in the days of people trying to avoid the charge for baggage and try to carry everything on with them. If you are seated in rows about 22 and back, good luck finding a place to stow your carry-ons near you. We were able to get our things stowed no problema. Robert had also made our seat reservations where we were sitting across the aisle from each other so it was easy to get up and walk around, go to restroom and not be stuck in the middle between a person that didn't quite fit in their seat.

Laura did NOT like the flight from NY to Costa Rica, head wind made it quite bumpy.

Got into Costa Rica at around 8:30 at night so about 12 hours since Marcus dropped us at the Austin airport. We were picked up by our hostel owner in his antique yellow Land Rover after about a ten minute wait. Drove us by a convenience store to get some snacks for breakfast then the half our up teh winding steep road to his new location. The view was amazing! We stayed up to midnight visiting with Alonso and hearing his plans for his new location high above San Jose.

No noisy city, just neighborhood dogs barking so put in my earplugs in and slept quite well. Up here in the cloud forest area it was 52 degrees. Nice transition after all the cold temps in early Jan in TX.

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