-or- Gettin’ there, gettin’ round, gettin’ home

We really did have the experience of planes, trains, and automobiles on our France trip. To start the journey, we were meeting Mer’s parents in Orlando (where they live). We flew from Sonotmu’s favorite airport, CAK (Akron-Canton), to Atlanta via Airtran airlines. We then had about a four-hour layover, and then we took the fairly short flight to Orlando, also on Airtran.

The Airtran flights had something new to me – all of their planes now offer XM radio. XM radio is satellite radio, meaning you can pick any of (for Airtran) 30 or 40 stations to listen to, including stations specializing in folk, broadway tunes, 60s, 70s, etc. The Rev will have to make this his official airline, since they were also broadcasting ML Baseball games. Since I was trying to read, I chose to listen to the 80s station. For some reason, folk music (my first choice) demanded too much of my brain for me to read, something that 80s music does not need to do. I could happily listen to cheesy music from my high school years and still make progress on my books. So the flights passed very agreeably.

Fun fact I learned from the 80s station: they played the B-52s’ “Love Shack.” This is not surprising, since the B-52s were fairly big (hair) in the 80s. What WAS surprising was my learning from Meredith that the song was “Love Shack.” Since I was a teenager in Maine,and I had an accent, and everyone around me had an accent, I was sure (and still think of it this way) that the song was “Love Shark.” Those of you familiar with the Maine accent, try saying “Love Shark” a few times, and see if it does not come out as “Love Shack.” In as much as the lyrics make sense at all, Love Shack makes more sense than Love Shark, but I still think of it fondly as Love Shark. “Love shark, love-love-love shark! Love shark, love-love-love shark! Love shark, bayyy-aaa-beeee!”

We met up with Meredith’s parents with no trouble, and went back to their house, where we had a very nice dinner of sloppy joes. I was so hungry, I had three. After supper, I was very delighted to discover that Dale had upgraded his modem to a DSL line. I took advantage of this by checking e-mail, blogs, and Facebook. It was a great relief to have high-speed internet. I also took advantage of it the next morning to find a store (Kohl’s) that Mer wanted to go to to get some last-minute supplies. Since our flight was taking off in the early afternoon, we had time. We borrowed the car, and ran the errands. While we were out, Mer let me go to Target and pick up a new 8-megapixel camera for the trip. My old camera had broken a few weeks ago, and we figured taking pictures of France was worth getting a new camera. I picked up a Canon PowerShot A630, and I am very pleased with it.

We were picked up by a limo service and taken to Orlando’s airport, again with no problems. We got on a US Air flight to Philadelphia, but we only had a 90-minute layover, so I could not dash into the city to get whoopie pies at the market. We actually made our connecting flight in a different terminal with no difficulty (Mer and I were not sure that 90 minutes was going to be sufficient to get another flight). We did board a little late (the flight was overbooked, so the boarding process took about an hour). Then, we had to sit for about an hour while mechanics tried to fix the toilets on the right side of the plane. They got them to work as long as the pane was above 16,000 feet, so that was okay. Then we waited another 30-45 minutes while they unloaded some cargo off of the plane because now we were over weight. The passengers took this with welcome good humor, and we took off about two hours late.

Because the plane was full, none of our traveling party were able to sit together. While that was less than ideal, it was okay. This fight also had something new for me on a plane – individual 7-inch LCD TVs in the seat in front of you, in coach! I was able to pick from a number of movies to watch. While I did read quite a bit, I also managed to watch a movie I had been meaning to see, Stranger Than Fiction, a movie about a real man’s life being controlled by a fiction writer. It was not a great movie, but it was well done, and I enjoyed it, especially for “free” on a plane. I read some more, and finished the last part of the flight up with The Lion King. The food on the plane was fine – I had a nice pasta-and-cheese dish; breakfast was a donut-like thing that must have horrified any French on the plane. The flight was smooth – only about 5 minutes of turbulence at one point. I did not get any sleep on the plane (I can rarely sleep on a plane), and I could always see a thin line of sunlight on the northern horizon when I looked out the window on occasion.

In the actual airport, customs was a breeze (we actually never even saw a customs agent for some strange reason), although since we were being picked up by a limo service, we did not have time to change money. This turned out to be fine, since ATMs turned out to be plentiful and as cheap or cheaper than currency exchanges. We never did change any money at all.

The limo driver spoke almost no English, so Mer and her mom did most of the talking. The drive through Paris would have been more interesting and memorable if I had not been up for 22 or 23 hours. We got to our hotel just fine, only to discover the rooms would not be ready until 1:00 (it was currently 11:30). So began the process of exploring France; more soon….