Day 7: the trip home

6:30am. We curse the sadism of cruises when they start making announcements for debarkation. We get ready and go for breakfast – what are they going to do if we miss our group number? Make us stay on the ship? Stay for the Mayercraft Carrier [John Mayer cruise]?

Tediously collect luggage, go through customs, and make our way to the airport. Checking in for our flight is even more disorganized. I’m convinced that I will never see my luggage again. There’s a long line at security, so we buy water to drink while waiting. They won’t let us in the line with our water bottles – even though we tell him that we plan to drink it and throw away the bottle in that trash can, up there by the metal detectors. Lucky we arrived very early since the whole process takes much longer than normal.

We hang out at our gate. We meet Lavonne again – she’s on the same flight to St. Louis.

Airport staff ask us if we’d like to fill out a survey. We grin and say yes. It’s about the food options in that concourse. We write a page of comments that begins with “As frequent travelers, we can state that you have much larger problems than your food selection…”

Once in St. Louis, we learn that we’ve lucked out, and that our plan of avoiding O’Hare was sound – it snowed yesterday, but is okay now, whereas Chicago is snowbound.

We meet some more dippers. Kristen is in our row once we board, so we chat some more. I admire her camera and photos on it. It turns out that she was right behind me at two of the GBS shows. I’ve ended up printing many of her photos because they’re better than mine, yet very similar.