Air Travel and Fabulous Manhatten Rendevouz

We have come a long way since the Age of Aviation began many moons ago. A hundred years ago it would have taken us about 10 days to travel from Miami International to La Guardia Airport in New York. These days it might take up to 20 days with a mayor American airline. Travel was brutal in the old days because back then there were rarely TV's in the hotel rooms.

The airline business began when the Wright-kids, in the Carolinas, build the first simplistic flying machine, while also inventing airline food from left-over cow cud.
Thanks to improvements in technology over the past few years, air travel is safer than it has been for the past three weeks!
Honorable mention must also go to Baggage Claims: this is where you spend three relaxing hours after u'r flight watching/searching luggage - none of it your's - being coughed up by a mysterious tunnel that is apparently connected to an airport in Nagasaki.

This latest trip of ours was another adventurous fun-filled trip. It started when the flight was delayed twice and we missed our connecting flight from Memphis - Elvis's birthplace. (The king of airport security here is a man named Earl. Do exactly as he says.) Our bags were send to the Vatican or somewhere. Imagine our excitement.

I'm not sure if it's done the same eveywhere, but in the States you go through metal detectors. These machines ("Don't worry, it's totally harmless," the security personnel assured us, although you'll NEVER see them go through it.) shoots out puffs of air/invisible rays that goes through your body. Airport security cooks their lunch in this device when nobody's around. And you have to take off some of your clothes to go through it.
Of course, travellers with obvious names like Mohammed or Abdul or Osama are excempt from this fun excercise, since that would be discrimination. This is true!

Accommodation in New York:
When calculating cost of accommodation in NY, always multiply your total holiday budget by 3. This is a conservative estimate.
Our hotel, although in a very convenient, pleasant location in Queens, close to the subway, was not really worth the $'s. The rooms were pretty small - if you wanted to change your mind, you had to go stand outside in the hallway. The hotel elevator was powered by two ageing oxen.

We got our luggage back just in time for our wedding on Saturday morning and enjoyed the rest of the time enjoying the wonderful sights and sounds of New York. And the taxi drivers!

We truly love the diversity, the surprise around every corner, the people. We'd stay here in a heartbeat.

Saturday night and Sunday we spend with our good old friends Brian and Sophia Womack. Brian and I were colleagues in Taichung and the four of us attended the same church. We hanged out a lot on weekends and it was pretty special to see them again, spend some time together and renew old ties.