Eight stories up in a posh hotel in Istanbul, Turkey right now. I’ve got a nice big window looking out on the industrial abyss below. It’s past midnight here but there are still people playing soccer on the field just out my window.
Well, we weren’t supposed to be here in Turkey, not for long at least. We had a 1 hour layover scheduled before our final flight would take us from Istanbul to Entebbe, Uganda. We missed the flight out of Instabul by a considerable margin though, and not by our own doing!
I started the ‘Life of Pi’ at the beginning of our flight out of San Francisco. About halfway through the movie I realized we weren’t even in the air yet. Now, that was after our boarding was delayed by an hour and a half. So, way behind schedule, our little party in the sky finally got airborne. I took one dosage of horse tranquilizer…ehh sleeping pills.. and didn’t wake up for another 11 hours when a very gruff flight attendant told me I was going to have coffee. My brain slowly woke up, but my muscles were still comatose from the tranquilizer and I nearly dropped my little cup of gods juice (coffee).
Behind, in front, to the left and to the right, I was surrounded by middle-aged Americans who probably live in a two-story house on a hill somewhere, and they probably have a dog named Spot and two kids that are in college, and they probably drive BMW’s or Porsches, and they probably were going to Tel Aviv, Israel to get closer to God because I DEFINITELY heard them freaking out that they were going to miss their connecting flight.
With about as little hassle as you could expect at an international airport in a foreign country, we found out how to get to a nearby hotel, all payed for by Turkish airlines.
Gobble gobble, tomorrow we have until 5 PM to see what kind of stuffing is in this Turkey. Ooooo, that pun is almost to bad to include in this, but my standards are low. I hope it all goes gravy.
The Pursuit of Happiness 