Where to begin?
How to put into words an experience that is beyond words?
I'm sure I'll figure out a way to at least record glimpses of a travel adventure
that has made my world vastly wider and truly more wonderful.
In the meantime, here's a tiny reflection from yesterday:
I departed our hotel in Madrid, after only four hours of sleep,
with a taxi arriving for me at 4:30AM.
(Debi's plane didn't leave until noon, so she saw me off
and returned for a little more sleep and the continental breakfast.)
The flight attendant on my earlier flight to Madrid from DFW had warned us the
Madrid Airport was, perhaps, the most challenging international airport
to navigate, so I knew I needed to get there early enough to allow
time for whatever twists and turns might await me.
When I stepped onto an elevator to make my way on the first leg of this journey,
I was accompanied by only one other person.
We compared boarding passes and realized we would be heading
for the same gate and same flight to Heathrow.
From that point on, Laddie, a businessman from Nigeria, was my guide,
making this whole airport-traversing-experience so much more pleasant for me.
We visited about our families, our work, and our mutual disappointment that
so much about our respective countries is skewed by the media,
including the "Nigerian scams" and the "U.S. extremists' behavior",
all of this in light of the recent incomprehensible behavior in London
by a small minority that is not at all representative of the vast majority
of that very civilized and gracious society.
We made a lovely connection with each other,
even the beginnings, perhaps, of what we might have called friendship,
reminding me that there are so many very good people
in this wide wide world of ours,
and that we are often much more alike than we are different.
And here's the best part:
Laddie seemed to appear out of nowhere (and at just the right time),
which seemed to be the case throughout our travels.
More about that later...
It's so good to be home!
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