It's all about the journey, not the destination, right?

Yesterday, after a whirlwind of final packing, we left Massachusetts for the last time before the trek. The plan was to fly to Italy for a vacation with Liz's family, then off to California for a couple of weddings, then off to New Zealand on October 21 to start the trail.

24 hours after we left, we arrived at our apartment in Rome. The trip was supposed to take about 12 hours.


This seems to be par for the course with us lately. We had a flight cancelled on the way to the John Muir Trail, and had to rent a car for an overnight drive to catch a train into Yosemite. We were also delayed overnight on our way to the Colorado Trail, lost our acclimatization day, and ended up going from sea level to hiking at 11,000 feet in the space of 12 hours. We also spent more than 40 hours, including an aborted takeoff AND a mid-flight turnaround, getting back from Hawaii. First world problems, for sure, but it seems like we can't fly anywhere without being significantly delayed. Liz denies it, but I'm convinced she has built up some serious negative flying karma somehow - whenever I fly without her, there are no problems!

We were scheduled to leave Logan Airport at 3pm on a flight to JFK, NY, and arrive in Rome around 1am (EDT). The flight to JFK was initially delayed because the pilot's seat belt was broken. It must have been REALLY broken, because they ended up replacing the entire pilot's chair. We had a 45 minute connection at JFK, so we immediately knew we'd miss it. We rebooked on a connection through London Heathrow, leaving at 7pm, which would have gotten us to Rome about 5 hours later than originally planned.

Then, at 5:30pm, this happened. A fire at one of the Logan fuel depots basically shut down the airport. We were delayed until ~10pm. We finally boarded the plane, flew to Portsmouth, picked up fuel, then took off for London around 11:30pm. Note that we were originally scheduled to arrive in Rome at ~1am EDT, so we barely left the US before our original arrival time.

We missed our connection at Heathrow, but British Airways was awesome - they had new boarding passes waiting for us when we got off the plane in London. We eventually ended up on a (again, somewhat delayed) flight arriving in Rome at 4:40pm (local time). By the time we caught a shared cab, and were the last people dropped off, it was about 6:00pm, or 24 hours after we had left the house in Newton.

But we made it, and we're in Rome for a few days! We'll be in Italy for about 9 days, with Dorothy (Liz's mom) and Marianne and Larry (Liz's aunt and uncle). I've never been to Italy before, and I'm really excited for some good food, wine, and I guess some art and history.

When we finally arrived, we met up with Liz's family and had some much needed wine at our apartment in Rome, then went out for a tasty pasta dinner. Now we're totally exhausted, and falling asleep at 9:30, but trying to stay awake for a little while to fight the jet lag. Tomorrow, the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel!