Revacation part 8 THE END

2010/04/02

For the 2nd day this week I woke up in the morning on a bus pulling into a bus station. We grabbed all stuff and hauled it out of there and found a taxi to get back to Ale's house. When we got there we just dumped it off and crawled in her bed to finish sleeping.

When we woke up we didn't do much. Today was a resting day. We basically sat on her bed all day (like how she is every time I call her on skype :P) and played with our computers. We copied each others pics from the #revacation. I gave her a bunch of media that I had on my hard drive that I put on there specifically to give her. She downloaded Windows 7 for me and installed it on my laptop along with a bunch of other stuff which was awesome. It was a nice day to just be together in a more normal setting than with the excitement of vacation all around us. Later I actually wish we had spent more time doing stuff like this. I love how tech savvy Ale is. <3

As the evening approached we both could fell our hearts growing heavy. It was time to pack up her dad's car so they could ride me to the airport to go home. The was the most glorious week I had ever experienced in my life so far and although it seemed to stretch out for longer than it actually was it had to end sometime and this was now. I knew this moment would eventually come and I dreaded it. I was getting sad because I had to leave.

It was a crappy long ride to the airport and when we got their her parents stayed with the car and Ale walked me in as far as she was allowed to go. I checked my bag and we walked to where I had to walk thru the security gate and sat down. What was I supposed to say? I don't think I needed to say much we were both just crying. We hugged and kissed and stuff until I got up to go to my plane. I think I cried thru about 3 security gates before I was able to stop. It sucked. I don't know why I had to go thru so much security either. It was pretty stupid but I eventually made it to my gate and boarded. It was time to leave this country and go home. I knew I'd be back someday. This was after all the trip of a lifetime.

EPILOGUE

2010/04/03

When I woke up and got off the plane in Washington DC I had a little less than 2 hours to get to the next plane back to Pittsburgh. I knew we had to go thru customs but little did I know I still had a bit of adventure yet to go. I scheduled everything this way because I felt I'd have enough time to get back to make it to Isaac's first ever baseball practice. Something I did not want to miss. When I got off the plane and shuffled down with everyone else to customs I started thinking that not only might I not make it but I might be stuck here for a long time. The line wrapped between those velvet rope things throughout the entire room. Sure they had a lot of booths at the end to check the people out but like only 3 of them were staffed at this time. I got on chat on my phone with Ale and told her what was going on. She didn't want me to worry so she kept reassuring me that I would make it. She didn't see this line though. It moved agonizingly slow. You could hear everyone bitching to each other and to loved ones on their phones that they were stuck in this line and were going to miss their flights. It took about an hour and half for me to make it to my turn but it seemed like forever. I was thinking at this point I wouldn't make it. The guy looked at my stuff and let me go thru. I started running.

In the next room was all our bags. I saw mine immediately and grabbed it. Ok, I have a few minutes. Maybe I would make it after all I thought. The next room was another security station. Take off all your clothes, etc. Good god man. Where do you think I got a gun from between here and where I got off the plane? For real. Again the lines moved so slow. Well there goes my hope of making it. I finally got thru this and started running again.

I came out in the airport proper and although I knew what gate I needed to make it to I had no idea where that was. I asked some guy and he said go back the way I came. That confused me. I went back down the stairs to the security station. This wasn't right and I was wasting valuable time. I went back up the stairs and looked the other way. There was a sign for gate A. I ran. Oh boy did I run. I had less than 10 mins. There was no way I thought. You always see in movies people running thru the airport like that but never have I experienced in in real life until now. That was me. My gate was of course at the furthest point away from where I currently was. At least now I had running buddies coming along with me. Other people were killing themselves as well to get to their respective gates. We all got a small break to sit down and rest when we got to the shuttle that went between gates. My legs were killing me. When the shuttle stopped we all took off again but I could barely run anymore. My luggage was too heavy and my calves were on fire. at least now I was at the right gate and I had an early number like 3 or something. As long as they went in numerical order I was almost there. I couldn't be that lucky. It, of course, was in reverse numerical order. My gate was way at the other end. I kept running the best I could. I kept telling myself that I could rest when I got to the plane.

I finally made it and I burst thru the gate throwing my boarding pass at the lady. Oh man, the plane wasn't here. This just opened up into a whole other corridor I had to run down and without fail my gate was the very very last. I could see the words Pittsburgh on it as I tried to catch my breath. I was sweating and dying here but I MADE IT!! I don't know how but I did with 1 minute to spare. Luckily I was in seat 1A so I could finally sit down. Just a quick 45 min jaunt home now.

There was still some more pain hauling my stuff to where I parked (if you remember my first #revacation blog it was pretty far back) but the worst was over. Oh no someone in DC broke my luggage. I only had one wheel now. :| That's going to make it harder.

I packed up my car and blasted straight to the municipal field. What a good daddy I am. Flying home from another country overnight on a 12 hour flight to go straight to my sons baseball practice is a story I enjoy telling. I texted Ale I had made it and sat down to see my son learn the wonders of team sports. Could there be anything better? A leg massage would be nice. :P

THE END

Revacation Part 2

2010/03/27

Someone must have reached across me and shut my window shade because when I woke up it was closed. That was a smart thing though because when I opened it, light blazed in. It was morning and I was almost at the airport (EZE). Nothing could stop me now!!

When we de-planed we walked down these awesome glass hallways that attached the planes to the terminal. Nothing like the retractable pieces of garbage at (PIT). I followed everyone down to Customs. We had to wait in line to show our passports and pay some kind of entry tax. Apparently you don't need a visa to visit Argentina from the US but the other way around, you do. Argentina recoops this cost to their citizens with this tax. Either way I could have used the $131 for other purposes but I knew about it ahead of time so I was prepared. After that I waited in line for another guy who stamped my passport and that was it. Get my bag and head out. Happiness!!

The area sort of funneled everyone towards a frosted glass double door that was the exit. I walked thru it and directly in front of me was a giant glass wall with hundreds of people staring at me with their faces pressed against it looking for their loved ones. Hi everyone that is staring at me. I am not the person you are looking for. Now I know how the monkey's at the zoo feel like. Where was my loved one? How was I supposed to find Alejandra in this mess? I started walking and saw the end where my area merged with the area all these people were. If I didn't see her by the time I got there what was I going to do? Ah I see her arm outstretched. I iz saved!! Hugs! Wow I'm here. You're here. This is slightly weird but not. I can't believe this. How was your trip? How long were you waiting? Where are we going now? Let's go to the hostel. Okay.

Outside a taxi man told us I couldn't bring my bags on a bus and that we should go with him. Ale said he was lying and we found and boarded the #8 bus after a few minutes with no problems. She sort of sat half on me and finally got to start enjoying each others company. We took our first picture together here. There was a rear view mirror on the ceiling in front of us for some reason and we could see ourselves in it. We did it! The revacation has started!

I got to see the country side of this strange land I was in while Ale filled me in on what was going on. The bus was empty when we got on it but the closer we got to the city the more and more people that boarded. Wow here we are, check this city out. Every block was packed with stores and there were signs and huge billboards everywhere. Wow there's a gas station, a sign to drink Coke, a soccer stadium, a train station, huge apartment buildings. This looks like normal familiar stuff but for some reason slightly strange to me. For blocks and blocks and blocks it just went on. NYC probably looks something like this but I have never been there. Ale showed me her bus schedule book. As big as this city was I was impressed she had studied this manual enough to know when and where to go. The bus wouldn't go directly to where we needed to go but we could get a taxi the rest of the way. 4 pesos for the bus but it would have been 40 pesos to get a taxi this far. I love that she knows things like that. We stopped and I dragged my stuff off the bus and into a taxi. Do these intersections lack signals? I think so. I don't know how many car accidents they have around here but from what I'm seeing it should be a lot. At least half the cars on the road are taxis and it doesn't seem to be mandatory to stay in your lane either.

Here at the hostel it is kind of weird. I had my first real interaction with someone that could not understand a word I was saying and vice versa. Luckily Ale took over and handled all this but it was neat to be right there and try to figure out what they were saying. They didn't clean our room yet or something but we could dump our stuff and by the time we came back it would be ready. Sounds like a good idea to me. My arms are killing me from hauling these bags around. There's only one remote for the air conditioners so we have to get the guy to come up here to turn it off and on. :/ Okay there's a bed and a dresser. Where is our bathroom? Oh it is the room next door. So we have to leave our room to go take a shower and stuff. :/ I got some shorts on and got my feet out of my big boots. It was cold in Pittsburgh but it's not here. We will go get a bite to eat and take a quick walk around while they finish doing whatever they are going to do to our room so we dumped our stuff and walked back out onto the street.

Right down the street from the hostel was a nice looking restaurant called Imperio's so we went in there and took a seat. Now I get to see how they do things down here. First thing I noticed, they don't give you free refills on drinks and everything is either con gas or sin gas (do you want it bubbly or not). It was fancy here. They had cloth napkins and the waiters were all dressed sharply but I could not read the menu. Yeah I see it says Pizza but what kinds are these? You don't have pepperoni down here? That is the most insane things I ever heard. Hmm since I don't know what this crap is I'm going to have to bite the bullet here and just trust you Ale to get me something I'll like. She ordered me 'Matambre con papas a la espanola'. It was awesome!!! :D Imagine a kind of regular personal pizza but instead of a bread crust that everything is on it's a big piece of meat. On top of that is ham. On top of that is a ton of melted cheese with spices and a few tomato slices. The whole thing is served with what we would call here potato wedges. It was awesome. I had a couple of 7ups with it, we took some pictures, I stole one of their classy cloth napkins and we were out.

It was a nice day for a walk. I remember seeing a block on the bus map that was in the shape of a circle. Apparently that was the park Ale wanted to show me so we went off in that direction. Watch where you step. There is dog poop all over the place. There is a burned out car filled with trash. Don't they clean up that stuff around here? Is this a foreign land thing or just a big city thing? I never figured that out. I started taking lots of atmosphere photos to remember how it felt to be there and pretty soon we were at the park. Around the outside were lots of vendors selling their stuff out of tents. Ale told me that most of the stuff there were selling was pirated America stuff. I guess it is marked up so bad in regular stores that no one buys it and almost everyone there has no qualms about buying their goods this way. That's just how it is. (I discovered this later when we found an electronic store and I looked at their PS3 stuff. Both the system and the games were about 4 times as expensive as if I would of bought them in a store back home.) There was a big pond in the middle of this park and there were a million pigeons flitting about. There were fountains in the water and cool statues around. We sat down and relaxed for a bit. We talked for a while and enjoyed each others company and the environment but there were some strong desires burning in the background. I think it's time to see if they finished our room.

I won't go into what happened next in too much detail. Let's just say the bed was insanely squeaky almost to the point of embarrassingly so. Now we can clean up and go back to meet her parents at her house and have dinner.

Wow this bathroom that we had to keep our clothes on to walk to doesn't even have a shower. Oh wait there is a hose in the sink. Oh we hook it to the faucet and hang it on the wall. How novel. :\ Wait the water pressure is so much that it keeps blowing it off the spigot. This sucks.

So we went to Ale's house and met her family. Her mom and dad and sister were all awesome I just wish I could understand them better. I got to see her house and her room. For some reason I never got the impression that her room was that small. They have a huge brick oven / grill thing in the middle of their house that is cool. Her dad grilled us all kinds of meat that we had for dinner. They kept testing things out on me to see if I'd eat it. Most things were ok. I mean meat is meat. Sure it tasted a bit different but as long as you don't tell me what it is until later I'll be okay. There was one kind of purple sausage that was all mushy and I didn't like. I found out later it was mixed with cow's blood so that was totally gross. Everything else was awesome. I gave her dad the headphones I bought for him (although for some reason Ale told him that she gave me the money to buy them. I'm not sure why. I thought he'd like me for giving him that present but if he thinks she bought it I won't have that going for me).

I also got to give Ale all the stuff I had been collecting for her. The Pens calendar, tons of American chocolate candy, a book on how to speak Pittsburghese and most importantly the less than 3 necklace. She really liked it which made me happy. When I saw it I knew it was the perfect gift since in all our chats we <3 each other. She says it's the best present she ever got and that she's never taking it off. That makes me feel good. We went back to the hostel and .. and slept. What a crazy first day!

TO BE CONTINUED