The Time Has Arrived

As we are sitting here in the Edmonton airport awaiting the start of the first leg of our journey I reflect on the past few days.  There was a point earlier in the week when the spectre of having to cancel the trip raised its ugly head.  It seems that I was suffering from a nasty pain in my abdominal area, well it seemed nasty to me, because I didn't like it one bit.  Kim was worried and instructed me to proceed to emergency to have it checked out.  Something about being an old guy I guess.

Well, luckily it turned out to be only a bit of a pulled muscle, however having told the doctor that we were planning to travel in a couple of days, he put me thru a couple of extra tests just to make sure.  Although the whole episode took a good few hours, we really appreciated the work done by all the hospital staff, especially considering the volume of people they were dealing with.  So, bottom line, we were good to go.

Now, if have to share with you, one of our reasons for going to Malaysia is to see family.  As you likely know, Kim is from there, and she has two daughters and seven grandchildren we will be visiting, not to mention her sister and a number of nieces and nephews.  So you can probably imagine, we are bringing the odd gift or two.  Kim had been packing for weeks, and because brother Richard is traveling with us, managed to pretty much fill six checked baggage, leaving a small amount of space for our clothes and such.  So... prior to leaving for the airport there was much weighing of bags (only 50 pounds you know), and then marking the bags so that they stand out from a thousand other bags, and finally strapping them so they wouldn't burst apart when loaded on the plane.  I told Kim that if she wanted to take any more we would need a bigger plane.

Son-in-law Aaron transported us to the airport in our van, check-in and security were smooth, and although the plane was an hour late, it is less than half full so the ride is good.  Yes, you are correct in assuming that this post is being completed on the way to Vancouver.  I will send it off when on the ground and catch up with you later on.