In the rain and sleet I returned from our second trip to Ecuador yesterday morning. Upon my 5:00 a.m. arrival in Atlanta it was raining. For the first time ever in my flying life I was the first off the plane and the first to enter the U.S. customs area of the Atlanta airport. I don't know if it was because of this that I was also
randomly selected to be scrutinized more closely by custom officials. The custom officer was either very pleased, or sorely disappointed, when he ruffled through my scantily packed suitcase of muddy clothes. He didn't even bother to check my backpack. Nevertheless, the whole customs process went very quickly - probably because of my extraordinarily early arrival time - and I was able to consider an earlier flight to Detroit. I arrived at gate A27 for the 7:25 a.m. departure flight and, after thinking about it a little, paid the $75 extra to get on this flight. Glad I did. The flight arrived in Detroit more or less on time and saved me a potential delay if I had instead waited for the departure of my originally planned 9:40 a.m. flight.
Thanks to recent inclement weather in Detroit (reminding drivers to go slower) there were no accidents on the I-94 and my cabbie got me home before mid-morning. Attention to my little cat, laundry, a couple of phone calls and emails later and then I was downloading and deleting photos.
This year I promised myself that I would be ruthless with my photo deletions and I think I have done a pretty good job of it. On the other hand I took far fewer photos this year, only about a 1/3 of the number taken last year - more about this later - and so the deletion process seemed much easier.
I return to work tomorrow - bracing myself - but I'll be adding my Ecuador blog entries over the next days and weeks.
Until next time, the above photo is a quiz photo which I'll answer in my next entry. Can you find the bird in the photo? There are many hints.
