photo by me

The airplane flights were interesting.

I flew out of Flagstaff on one of the Mesa Airlines flights. They are little airplanes and I had the middle seat in the back row (5 seats across, my legs went down the aisle). I sat next to a woman with a very small child who was bouncing around. But, really, it wasn’t so bad.

I had 40 minutes to run all the way across the terminal to get to my next flight. I don’t know why they do that.

So I used the people-movers and got there as fast as I could. I got there with 15 minutes to spare and was able to buy something to eat on the long flight.

I had a really big guy in front of me, another big guy behind me, and a fairly large guy next to me (I was surrounded by men. The guy in front of me kept pushing back and my knees were hitting the seat (I’m pretty tall and have long legs). The guy behind me kept pushing his knees into my kidneys (and I hadn’t even reclined my seat). They guy next to me spread his legs wide so mine were pushed to the side and he took the armrests so my arms were pushed to the side.

By the time I got off the plane, I was sore. I had to take time to stretch and get my muscles back in order.

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Yesterday we went to the National Zoo. It’s a free zoo here in the Capital. We took the Metro and walked past a bunch of Irish pubs that were celebrating even at 10 a.m. It was making me laugh.

The zoo was wonderful. I got to see the baby panda and he was delightful. The elephants, giraffe, and great apes were amazing.

Today I’m going to wander around and get acclimated to the city. It’s hard for me to know which way is which without mountains so I have to figure out how to know which way is which.