Thursday, October 23, 2008
9:00AM After a leisurely breakfast, I decided to get to the airport early, process through and catch up on notes. There was a church group of 20+/- directly in front of me so I settled in for the wait. After about 20 minutes, the group leader turned to me in pleasant conversation and said “I see you have decided to leave early, too.” I said that this is my scheduled flight, why?” He said “A hurricane is headed this way. His group was scheduled to leave on Saturday but was advised to leave this morning if they wanted to get out before the hurricane arrived, that the airport could be closed for several days by later in the afternoon.”
A bit of a problem when one tries to get by with a minimal understanding of the language: Last night and again early this morning, while watching CNN, all TV channels were closed down for 15 minutes except the official Honduras station, while the Honduras President explained the latest events of flooding and government activities in the northern half of the country (I thought!). My Spanish was good enough to pick up on the assessment of present flooding conditions due to the present heavier than usual rainy season (actually, the country is poor enough that, during every rainy season things flood but flood control measures cannot be implemented so the next rainy season-regardless of intensity or duration- causes catastrophic events; this year is no exception). I did not catch the warning of increased flooding expected due to the approaching hurricane! So, here I am, processed in, watching the high cloud cover slowly lower and hoping that our plane will land/take off before visibility decreases and flights are stopped till the storms pass. We’ll see…
12:23PM Flight lifted off.
6:30PM In Birmingham, Elise is here to meet me
10:00PM Arrive home, end of trip.