Finsatsea: October 17 - On the road again

Here I sit in the United Club at Logan Airport waiting until it’s time to board my flight to Montreal. Stan drove me down from New Hampshire because Katie’s one in person class is on Tuesday and Thursday. Traffic has always been horrible coming south, but today we had an uneventful and relatively fast ride.

I had a nice visit in Merrimack. Aside from our train ride the other day we didn’t do anything exciting, but that’s okay. Just being together is nice too. I frankly don’t know how parents today maintain their sanity with the schedules they must keep. Tuesday after school Alfred went to a class he’s taking that involves building robots out of Lego. At this stage they are writing code to make them move around. (He’s 9, mind you, and knows infinitely more than I know about anything to do with computers.) On a usual Tuesday Katie would have been off to choir practice at the church in the evening because she’s the music director, but because I was visiting that was canceled. Yesterday Katie and I picked Alfred up and took him to swimming class. He came home, changed and Stan took him to soccer practice. Everybody was finally home by around 7:15 and we could slow the pace down. Truthfully, I get tired just watching the goings on! Fortunately, my grandson seems to love all these activities and isn’t being prodded into doing them. Oh, to have that much energy!

We’ve had a couple of sunny days but quite a bit cooler than when I first arrived. This morning there was frost on the lawn when I looked outside. When I packed I didn’t pack very many cold weather clothes because the vast majority of this trip will be to warmer climes. I have a feeling I’m going to be wearing the few things I brought over and over again for the first several days. Well, it’s par for the course for me to not pack well. I don’t think I’ll ever perfect the art of packing.

I made it to Montreal! Better late than never. My plane was late arriving in Boston from someplace and then it had a maintenance issue. We finally took off a little over an hour late. It was a great flight though. It was a United flight that was really Air Canada and the plane was great; it was a pretty new one with comfy seats. The flight was only about 45 minutes long, but we were served a light meal. Imagine that! You can fly practically cross-country in the US and get nuts and sunchips. My driver from Blacklane was waiting and parked right near the exit. If you ever need a ride in some faraway place I highly recommend Blacklane. My driver Roy was a delightful man and we solved the world's problems on the way into Montreal. The really good news was that he told me the leaves here are peaking now, later than usual. I'm looking forward to traveling up the St Lawrence and getting some good Leaf-peeping in.

I'm staying tonight in the Ritz Carlton in downtown Montreal. The room is very nice except for one thing - the light, window blinds, and high-tech toilet controls are challenging to say the least. I might still be figuring them out had a waiter not come by to bring me some petit fours and before he left he gave me a tutorial. I had a snack in one of the restaurants downstairs and struck up a conversation with a very nice Australian couple who will be two doors down from me on the ship. It turns out we have some mutual acquaintances so we had a lot to talk about.

Aren't these great looking? I don't know if I'll be able to resist just a taste.

And that's it for today. I'm not setting an alarm or getting a wake-up call in the morning. I just have to be up and ready by 12:30 PM for the car that will take me to the ship. Oh, I forgot. On the way in from the airport I could see a beautiful full moon in a totally cloudless sky. I couldn't get a photo, but hopefully tomorrow night on the ship I'll be able to get one. It's supposed to be clear and in the low 60's tomorrow which should be lovely. I'm pooped so for now, À demain, as they say here in Quebec.