Flight to Seattle

9 AM.

We’re waiting at the Southwest gate in Midway for our flight to Seattle. We have a 9:40 AM flight out and we got through security fine considering that yesterday some people tried to send packages of explosives via cargo air to the U.S. There is a 50-something woman in front of me wearing skin-tight jeans and holding a Louis Vuitton mini dog carrying case and Roseann just pointed out that there is a woman talking to the gate people wearing a two-tone purple and fuschia ill-fitting jump suit. I swear it’s like fashion inspired by Paris Hilton circa 2005 and Will Smith circa 1988. Just don’t cross the streams.

We checked in 4 bags (including one Big Bertha bag which has a bunch of clothing as well as snorkeling gear – for those wondering, we are not planning on exploring the November top-water ecosystem of Puget Sound, this is for Maui and Kauai). We are also dragging on two carry-ons each. We will be going through 2 radically different climates and we are thankful that our initial flight is on Southwest since they don’t charge for extra bags. When we fly to Hawaii in a week we will have less bags since the plan is to get rid of all of our winter gear before we leave Seattle, UPS’ing unneeded luggage back to Chicago.

Our limo - not in picture, us holding Starbucks

We took a limo to the airport because of all the bags. Our baggage at the time included two Starbucks containers, since Midway does not have a Starbucks and we desperately needed our fix early in the morning (for those wondering if we chose Starbucks because they open very early, the answer in ‘no’ – we chose Starbucks because it’s damn good coffee. Discuss amongst yourselves).

Roseann keeps saying "Devil’s Child" as she points out the screaming children waiting to board. For those who can name the movie reference, you get 2 bonus points. Strangely enough, "Devil’s Child" is also one of the nicknames for our cat Paprika, who is currently at home tying up the little white gray cat and picking out some torture implements to play with. We dropped off our cats that need medicine to our friends Jean and Joe and to my brother Michael and his wife Chris.

Roseann's optimized checklist for departure

So, in short, we're packed, carted off to the airport and are waiting for the flight to start boarding. I was going to make a har-har joke above about wondering if they have Starbucks in Seattle, but I’ll save punch-drunk jokes for later in the trip. Hopefully later today, Roseann and I will be having a cuppa in Pike Place market and discussing the lovely and tasteful decoration of our B&B. Now, I’m just going to check my carry-on bag for cold medicine (I’m trying to be proactive with the woman next to me coughing up a lung, and no, it’s not Rosseann) and then board the flight.