Hello, Pensacola.

Part of this post is needed to vent and rant on the frustration associated with what getting from point A to point B has become when flying. Before we even got to the plane, we had to get rid of a couple of CO2 cartridges from our PFDs (personal floatation device), these special life vests that are very minimal and only inflate by pulling a cord. Wait a minute, this sounds familiar. Don’t the plane’s life vests inflate by pulling a cord and we may be talking about the same damn technology? In other words, the plane is full of CO2 cartridges, but we couldn’t bring ours that came with the vests. That makes a lot of sense (not!). Anyway, when Tana was outside on the curb getting rid of the CO2, an airport security person thought she was a total paranoid basket case, needing to bring her own personal floatation device on the plane: “Wow, do you always fly with a life jacket?”

We also played a super fun 5-part game with the plane seats. (1) Buying tickets that allowed us to choose our own seats, (2) losing the seats during check in because apparently it was a courtesy and not a guarantee, (3) gate agent alluding to seat assignment being done by a computer like a lottery, no matter how nicely I asked, (4) same agent actually assigning us slightly better seats when we decided to let our bags get checked(!), and finally, (5) switching with other passengers directly, so that we could sit together and Tana can stretch her bum knees out. Can’t wait for teleportation or should we just boat everywhere from now on?

Not the best time to pinch a back nerve… Tana is grateful for airport courtesy carts. And we got lucky with seats on our connecting flight, lots of leg room while we waited for a replacement flight officer to arrive and fly us to our new second home!

Our boat’s name is Vera Kate. She may change her name in the future to something that fits better with her new permanent crew of a couple of mature queers. For now we will refer to her as VK – a bit more androgynous, a nice transitional name…

We will officially introduce our trip crew in a future post. Until then, we want to acknowledge how hard they and our engineer worked on preparing VK for the journey. And they left the lights on, so that we can easily find her in the middle of the night, having finally arrived in Pensacola!