She said "You are one in one thousand", I said "Oh lucky me!"

I'm back.  Yup, did my stint at San Francisco.  Toured my face off and my feet apparently!  Been and saw every attraction possible, zoomed down to Napa and Sonoma Valley, saw Yountville.  Did a 12 hour stint down the California Coast with pit stops at Davenport, Monterey, Pebble Beach and Carmel and I lived to tell you all about it.  Over the next few posts I will share some pics and some of my adventures.

And you can find a few of my photos HERE from one of the vineyards I toured in the Sonoma Valley.

In the meantime, you know an adventure is just not an adventure without it going slightly haywire.

It started off simple enough, well at least you would think so. We left at 3:30 a.m. from our home and drove the hour and half to the airport.  I was excited or at least I thought I was, in fact I think I was just so crazily tired that I was drunk with fatigue.

I jauntily sailed through the airport looking for the Horizon air ticket agent, okay I walked like a zombie with big baggie eyes up to the ticket agent, who swiped my passport where the handy dandy ticket machine spit out my ticket with a resounding "blech".  I looked up with my two peas in a snow hill, tired blue eyes and smiled and said my polite Canadian 'thank you so much' for which the ticket agent gave my a sympathetic smile and said 'I'm so sorry'.

What? sorry for what?  But before she could answer, the line behind me moved me up and out of the way so that they could greedily get their tickets. I tried to elbow my way back in but was met with a strong opposition of impatient, tired, and none to happy fellow Canadian travelers.  Believe you me, Canadians are not a polite as you think we are especially at 5:00 a.m. in the morning!

Puzzled, I walked over to security where I was stopped by a friendly and slightly thinner version of Santa Claus, who looked at my ticket, sympathetically smiled and took a pink highlighter and swooped it across my ticket and sent me through the scanner who loudly blared a triumph "BUUUUUZZZZZZZZZ".  I was immediately rushed by several security officers and one in particular, mumbled at me with his thick Asian accent and pointed his finger to a quarantined area. I couldn't understand a bloody word he said nor the instructions he was trying to impose upon me.  I kept insisting that I had metal in my leg, it was just metal in my leg.  Hello, anyone listening to me, it's metal in my leg!!!!  A friendly, but firm looking RCMP officer than escorted me to a secluded area for which I sat for the remainder of the time prior to boarding my plane whilst I continuously, nervously and feverishly glanced over at my better half with pleading eyes.

Finally, boarding for our plane was about to begin and while I watched all those start to board, a female security officer approached me and told me stand with my legs and arms spread apart while she frisked me and then I had the joy of having my hands swabbed and tested for illegal substances.  

For some reason, I broke out into complete laughter, whether it was because I was past the point of fatigue, or whether the situation just seem absurdly crazy, neither the police nor the security officer seemed amused by my early morning cackle.  Apparently my fellow Canadians lose their senses of humour at certain times of the day! My stealthy escort, Mr. RCMP cocked his head and said "what's so funny miss". Well, says me, see my fiancee that is waiting over there for me, he is an Arab, and I am the one standing here being swabbed! So much for having a round apple pie face! By the way, my better half was not too amused that I was trying to get him nabbed!  lol

Finally I passed the Canadian Security Test and as I exhaled a big sigh of relief, Ms. Security Officer looked at me sympathetically and said "Don't be too happy hun, you are going to have to go through this again in Seattle..."  WHAT?  "Yes, we have a system that randomly picks people to test for security breaches, and you are it.  Look at it this way, you are one in in one thousand!"

And she was right, I got to Seattle, spent time in a glassed in security box, yelled at because I was standing too close to some guy who was in there too, apparently we could cross contaminate each other, and then I had the not so happy pleasure of being aggressively felt up by some female American Security Officer who apparently took her job very seriously.  And you know what, I still have the wedgie to prove it!

Oh lucky me!!!!

Until Next Time.

Tracy

PS, A special thank you to Paul, Mynx, Ruth and Beliza for the recent awards... I will be addressing your utter kindness and generosity in a future post.  Thank you for thinking of me!!!  Love you guys!

By the way, I hope y'all being doing good!  Can't wait to catch up on your blogs!  Cheers!