People, People, Everywhere

An amazing travel day, although it did begin early after a night of not much sleeping because I was so excited. I pulled into the long term parking lot thinking I would have to walk in the rain and when I got out of my car, there was the shuttle waiting to drive me right up to the door! I met two ladies later on that didn't even know there was a shuttle, so I was just lucky I guess.

My first plane, the one to O'Hare was almost an hour late, but since I had a very long layover it didn't really matter and the little plane we flew on was actually a lot of fun bouncing around in the storm!

Once I was at O'Hare, I had to go find out where my gate was. The signs were down and the tickets didn't have that information. It turned out I was a long way from where I needed to be, but I met a really nice guy from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and we did a lot of visiting off and on during the afternoon and again on the plane when it turned out our seats were very close. In between talking with him and eating lunch, a Leonardo DiCaprio look alike came over and sat down and started talking. He looked about sixteen, but he was going home after spending the summer as an intern at one of the big Chicago firms. Very sweet and funny young man. Once I got on the plane I thought I had the dourest seat mate in the world. Tall, dark and handsome, he didn't even look up from his video game when I sat down. At first I thought I wouldn't say anything to him. I didn't want him to think he was stuck next to some chatty old lady, but eventually a thought popped into my head. "What if he is just shy?" So when he looked up I just said hi and asked if he lived in Denver.

He was very chatty and a wonderful seat mate too! He was here from Sidney, Australia and going to Monmouth College where one of my friends is a semi-retired chaplain. He knew of her, but didn't know her. He told me all about AFL a sort of football, basketball, soccer type sport I saw on television this spring and found fascinating, but confusing. Then we talked about where we'd like to go on vacation and he said I really needed to come to Sidney. (I have no problem with that!) The people in the seats beside us were a 98 year old woman who was lively and funny and two gorgeous young blondes from Brussels who were renting a car to explore Colorado when we landed. Both were so cute, but he reminded me of the Spencer I wrote about earlier this year.

The man from the Air Force Academy got down all our bags for us while we were waiting to disembark and I found my way through to the passenger pick up where my son and granddaughter were waiting to take me home. My son made dinner and I got to watch him being a dad. It is something else to watch your baby diaper and feed and play with his baby. This baby is so lucky (and so beautiful!)

Now I am going to crash and I think I will sleep like a rock. I am so exhausted!