Flight

Today was the big day: the day of Zoe and my flight to the states. My dad is having a show at the Triton museum in San Jose, so we thought it would fun to visit. It is pretty soon after Zoe's school year started to be taking time off, but we cleared it with her teacher before going. Anyway, we had been building up the plane flight for a while, and Zoe was very excited about it. Unfortunately, most connections via Lyon seem to involve painfully early flights out of LYS, and we ended up having to take the 5AM satobus to Lyon. I had not slept very well because after almost an hour on the phone with KLM and Air France, I still did not have a boarding pass for the Amsterdam-SFO leg of the flight (but Zoe did). I was picturing having to find our way back from Amsterdam on trains. As far as the early hour is concerned, although having children has shifted my concept of what I consider "early", I am definitely not an early morning person, and am barely functional at that hour. I guess I will never be an alpinist. The bus pulled into the furthest possible point in the terminal from the departure gate, but we made it to the plane in time, and took off as the sun was rising. I saw a terrified cat skittering across the path of the plane as the engines spun up and we took off. It was at this point that Zoe opened the first of many mini-presents, and watched the first of several movies on the iPad. After landing in Amsterdam and running to the gate, which was again almost twenty minutes away, we cleared security and found our seats. The plane was delayed in taking off because of "trouble starting" one of the engines. Whenever I hear things like that from the captain, I have an awful sense of foreboding. I imagine newspapers reporting that passengers were informed of engine troubles shortly before their doomed flight, but I suppose that's a little paranoid. Anyway, seven Zoe presents, four *disgusting* meals and three movies later, we stumbled off the plane. We were greeted with the usual highly oiled paradigm of efficiency that is US customs, and almost two hours after getting off the plane, we walked out of the arrivals door. Kenji and Gail were waiting for us, and Zoe excitedly gave them hugs and kisses. We stopped at Picante on the way home, for the requisite fish tacos. Kenji got a chili relleno, which was also fabulous. The watermelon and jamaica agua frescas were great, and very atypically not over sweetened.