15 July 2014

The adventure began sometime before our eventual drive to the airport with Hiram. Our journal's hold our  'wouldn't it be nice' lists that include our desire to travel together and imagining that moment when we are in the airport waiting to board, each in a calm quiet moment of anticipation. Reality was quite close to how we imagined and it was a wonderful moment. I however spent some time on a telkom payphone trying to divert all office calls to Brian Hawksworth and associates as I had failed to do this  from home. As it turns out this was not possible and I  had to  spend my three weeks in America thinking of my phone ringing back home. It certainly wasn't ringing when I returned and there weren't many messages left for me.

I walked to the duty free shop to secure some chocolate and walked around the terminal before being called to board.

As we shuffled closer to the plane Noah developed a condition in only being able to breath by sucking air into his lungs only through the small gap between his teeth and he became more and more panicked by this that he was not getting enough oxygen. Adding to his distress was the fact that we had to walk down a long passage and as he pointed out, bad things happen at the end of long passages.

The plane was full and we were seated quickly a few rows behind Zac and Shona and kids.

We all focused our full attention on the entertainment available, ICE it is called, and the kids were soon efficient in its options and workings, except for me as I had chosen to first disinfect everything we were to touch with antiseptic wipes. While the kids and Melissa had shows on before the plane taxed out I was focused on the cameras showing the view of the tarmac. Throughout our travels there and back I was amazed at our kids lack of care for the window seat.
Dinner was served and was glorious , I had the lamb. After things settled down I walked further back in the plane and found rows of empty seats, brilliant that I could now sleep. I helped a passenger  behind clip her tray in and the passenger in front pull his seat back and felt welcomed  and accepted in the row in between. I tried to persuade my family to join me on the rows, Sophie took my 3 seats and I moved to 4 seats alongside. Although Noah and Jonah did come back, they just ended up watching more shows from different seats.