Blessings and Turbulence

We were so blessed to be sent off by about 2 dozen of our closest family and friends at the airport on the 17^th. We left with many tears and smiles. We are blessed beyond words to have so many people to miss and to miss us. After almost interminable good-bye's we went swiftly through security and set out for our 23 hours (or so we thought) of travel time. Everything was perfectly normal the whole way…until we got to our first gate. This is how our itinerary was supposed to look: Leave Denver at 9:04 p.m. and get to San Francisco about 10:40p.m. After about 1 ½ hr layover we would board a plane for a 14hr flight to Taipei, Taiwan. After that, a 1 ½ hr layover before boarding a plane for a 3 ½ hr flight to Phnom Penh. Easy enough…23 hours and we are at our new home. However, that is not quite how things went. That brings us back to our first gate. Our Denver flight was delayed about an hour and 15 min due to mechanical problems. So our 90 min timeframe to make our connecting flight in San Fran was diminishing quickly. We were grateful to have such helpful staff call ahead and even ask all other passengers to wait and let us off first even though we were basically riding in the tail cone of the plane (that is the "aft" portion of the plane for those seasoned air travelers). So we exited the plane in lightning speed (imagine how fast that is…6 of us with a total of 12 carry-on's each with the equivalent of 2.2 cinder blocks in them), and ran/walked/panted our way to the security checkpoint that would bring us to our next gate. Apparently we didn't look pitiful enough as the staff there just looked at us and with as much of a smile as they could muster at 12:30 a.m. told us we just missed it. Needless to say we were all thrilledJ. Actually, the kids (and Carolyn and I) rolled with it well. Consequently, we were guests of United at the S.F. Hilton and also had breakfast on them. Later, after about 33 phone calls and 94 min talking to a woman at the United counter who was "somewhat" difficult to understand, we ended up doubling our total travel time. 23 hours of travel is now about 47 hours. So as I type this it is about 1:00 p.m. pacific time. We are somewhere over the Pacific en route to Tokyo where we will spend 2 hours. Then we will be on to Singapore where we get to spend 8 hours. Yippee! From there we will fly to Cambodia where we hope our layover is about 3 years. All in all this "turbulence" has us arriving in Cambodia about 23 hours later than we first thought. Oh well, we are all together, healthy and ready to begin this next phase in our lives. Thanks again for joining us on our adventure.