Lost In America

Hey everyone. So we finally made it to Miami after, what should have been a five hour flight with a two hour lay-over in Dallas, turned into a 13 hour ordeal.

Apparently America is feeling a longing for our departure that we must have not been returning in full, thus its desire to thwart every attempt made by us to arrive at our final destination before leaving this country for, in the grand scheme of things, just a small amount of time. Either that, or it was American…Airlines, that is, and its longing for the customers it lost yesterday.

After packing for our four month voyage (here is what four months of luggage looks like), we visited our families, said our goodbyes, then pumped ourselves up to get to Miami where the MV Explorer was waiting for us. Well, after a two and a half hour delay at Ontario Airport, waiting for our plane to be repaired due to a “problem” discovered the night before that also required a test flight, then boarding our newly scheduled connection flight in Dallas to a plane filled to the brim with angry passengers due to a cancelled flight in addition to our own delayed flight that took a little over an our to board (and one flight attendant yelling at me about seats), we felt like we were finally ready for Miami. Especially since the plane took the twenty minutes to taxi to the runway, point it’s steel nose in the general vicinity of Florida, and wait its turn to take-off…even rev its engines…however, we were wrong. We didn’t predict that as soon as the engines revved up for that sudden burst of speed needed for flight, they just as suddenly cut out, and the very polite pilot informed us that “someone” forgot to put some gas in our tank. Back to the gate for us, and another hour later, we had gas. TAKE-OFF!

In the end, we got to Miami. We were tired, our hotel (motel) ended up catering specifically to doped up transients, and we ate some grease with a little pizza thrown in for good measure. But we found our way to the port today, and our now on the ship!

Our cabin is so very cozy, and I will take a video of the layout and post it tomorrow. We have met all of the faculty and staff at a very nice little party for everyone, and Sarah is attending her first meeting.

We’ll be taking off tonight and dropping anchor a mile or so off the coast of Florida to sleep. Then off to the Bahamas tomorrow.

We haven’t explored the whole ship yet, but we will, and post every detail.

Thanks for reading.

Peace.