Headed South: Bogotá

No one can really prepare you to leave your eight year-old at home for up to two months while you fly off to South America to bring back his little brother. Neither of us wanted to do it, of course, but it had to be done.

Mom and Carrie-Bri picked us up at 9:30 in Dad’s car. The muffler had recently fallen off, so we sounded more like a plane taking off down the highway. The drive allowed me to read more Calvin and Hobbes prior to drop-off.

I could see the brave lip quiver as we exited the Honda. Big hugs. He waved wildly to Oxbear as they drove off.

Half an hour later while we waited at our gate, I texted Carrie for an update.

“Nothing Minecraft and an Egg McMuffin can’t fix,” she replied.

It had been nearly six years since I’d been on a plane. I discovered I still enjoy take-off.

Sitting at our gate in Atlanta, I decided I’d gone one too many hours just sitting and staring off into space. I don’t usually mind it that much, but after another four hours or so of doing that, I was ready for a little entertainment. Fortunately I had a couple of old ballgames saved on iTunes. 2012 NL Wild Card it was.

A couple of hours later, somewhere over Jamaica, I concluded the reliving of that particularly tense game in Atlanta and put away the laptop. Caught a few lights in the tropical island as we sailed over it towards the big continent.

Bogotá was cold; we were prepared.

I wasn’t prepared, however, for our driver to speak about 2% English; he probably wasn’t prepared for us to speak about 2% Spanish. He handed me his cell phone to speak with the Colombian director.

“There has been a change of plans. We have had so much rain lately,” she laughed a little. I listened hard past the accent. “So you will not fly tomorrow. But you will drive. You will be picked up at five o’clock tomorrow morning.”

It would be a short night.

And despite the lateness of the hour – it was already after ten o’clock – we managed to patch a few conversations together with our driver before arriving at our Bed & Breakfast about a mile and a half above sea level somewhere in Bogota.

I think I finally fell asleep around one-thirty.