March 20: Our Adventure Begins
The trip to Italy for Dee, Regina and I began at 5 a.m., in the Cadet Field House parking lot. Thanks to Diane Gardner in the athletic department travel office, the three of us had an Academy shuttle to take us up to DIA for our commercial flight to Venice. And unlike our early suspicions, it was not one of the big busses but just an oversized van (don't laugh ... we've been there before when a 60-passenger bus has shown up for just five or six of us).
Dee and I were on the same orders and we had checked both checked in the night before. We handed over our bags to the lady at the counter and waited for Regina. Security wasn't too crowded at that exact minute, so we breezed through that and headed toward our gate.
We had two stops to make between Denver and Venice, although both layovers were less than two hours, so it wasn't too bad.
From Denver to Atlanta, Dee and I sat together, while Regina ended up near the back of the plane. Thanks to "Delta on Demand" and some earphone splitters, we watched "Enchanted" on one very tiny screen. (Oddly enough, this was the only leg of the flight that had the in-seat TV feature.)
Once we landed in Atlanta, we grabbed some lunch. (The Hot Dog Construction Company was awesome ... just had to throw that out) We walked to our gate and waited to board. During the boarding process, Dee and I watched this husband and wife tried to find room for their carry-on bags. With the "help" of a not-so-friendly flight attendant, their bags were stored in four different overhead bins - one of which wasn't even in our section of the plane. The poor little man was frantically scribbling the seat locations on his hand so that they could find them when we landed.
The flight from Atlanta to New York wasn't that long and we stayed in a low altitude so you could watch our progress up along the Atlantic coastline, over the St. Lawrence Seaway and across Long Island.
More walking and waiting greeted the three of us at JFK airport, but finally we were on board a 767 for the final leg of our journey. Dee and I were in the middle section of three seats, while Regina was across the aisle and one row up. Luckily, the middle seat was empty, so Dee and I were able to spread out and store all our stuff in the empty seat between us. We received our little "overseas goody-bag" that contained an eye mask, earplugs, toothpaste, toothbrush, headphones and hand lotion.
The sun was blazing on the horizon, so most of the people along the window side closed their shades as we finally headed off to Italy.
