Friday, November 20, 2009

Tucson - Day 1


Before I flew out of Toronto at 6:30 a.m. last Thursday to head to Tucson, Arizona, the plane had to be de-iced. Can you believe it? Apparently, even a little skiff of frost on the wings and top of the plane can add a lot of weight and create a potentially dangerous situation. Hey, I'm all about the safety. Besides, it was fun to watch the guy in the big yellow cherry picker spray the wings with water.

As I mentioned before, you can't actually fly directly from Toronto to Tucson, so I had a stopover in Chicago on the way there. The flight to Chicago is a short one, we got there in about a hour and a half, and it was quite a trip to be flying so low so early in the morning, as the sun was rising behind us. I got some great cloud photos and the views of the three Great Lakes that we flew over (Erie, Huron and Michigan) were pretty amazing. Hard to imagine they are so BIG but seeing them from the air really drives the message home.

I was able to take this totally cool photo of a cloud over downtown Chicago as we were coming in to land at O'Hare Airport. Doesn't it look like there is a flying saucer hovering over the city???

I had close to 3 hours to hang about the airport in Chicago while I waited for the flight to Tucson, so I checked out the shops and ate some breakfast at The Great American Bagel, which is known as The Great Canadian Bagel where I come from!

The flight to Tucson was just over 3.5 hours long and unbelievably, there were no TVs or audio, so no in-flight movies or radio programs to pass the time. Thank goodness I had a good book and an iPod to entertain myself. Then again, I'd been awake since 3 a.m. so napping was also on my agenda.

My friend Stefanie met me at the luggage carousel in Tucson, where she had arrived from St. Louis about half an hour before me. While we were waiting for Heather to arrive, we got a phone call from her to let us know her original flight from D.C. to Denver had been cancelled and she was currently en route via San Francisco instead and would be arriving a couple of hours later than planned.

So Stef and I headed off in her rental car and made our way to Kate's groovy house. The three of us went out for lunch and groceries, then went back to the house to greet the next arrival, Debi, the owner of Beads of Colour in Dundas, Ontario (see my blog posting of August 19th http://cynfulcreationscanada.blogspot.com/2009/08/beads-of-colour.html) and then Stefanie and I headed back to the airport to pick up Heather. Check out the lovely photo I took of the sunset while we were driving to the airport - I love it!
Once everyone was settled back at Kate's house, we went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner and were joined by some of the other workshop students who were staying at the studio house. Soon it was time for me to head to bed in the Barbie Camper...I'll tell you all about that experience tomorrow!

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