Volume 17 - Day 171/194, 2025 - Friday

Well, for all practical purposes, it is still Friday somewhere. Where I am right now, it is 40 minutes in to Saturday, and we need to be in the lobby by 6AM. Friday, for the most part, was a day of delays and pat-downs. And it wasn't even a fun pat down. We got up at a reasonable time and had a nice breakfast, went back to the hotel to check out at about noon. All that was fine. The trip to the airport should have taken about 45 minutes, and it took over two hours. When going through the security check point, they were not fond of the fact that I was wearing a knee brace, so I was pulled aside, and was pulled aside for a full search. Also, those people have no sense of humor. They took me in a little room, with all my other stuff still left out on the conveyor. They didn't care, they just wanted me to drop trough and take off the brace and let them run it thrugh the x-ray machine. It would have been better if it were a cute man that did the patting down, but it wasn't. They touched and rubbed up on parts of me that I had forgotten about thirty years agom but am happy to have once again made their acquaintance. At some point, I guess somebody pushed a panic button, so more enforcement officers cam in to the room three different timeasking who pushed the panic buttons. THere were only three of us in that room, and apparently the button was pushed three times. I can neither confirm nor deny.  Then the flight was delayed, and at one point, the captain said, and I am quoting..."We nowhave a completely working airplane. It should all be okay.' It was in fact all okay, and we arrived in Krakow about an hour and a half late, and then it took an hour to ckear customs.THen we finally got to the hotel, a lovely place, in what I think is an older part of Krakow. I think that becasue it was daerk when we got here, and we couldn't really tell. It is what it is. In four hours, the alarms will go off, and we will begin the 7 hour tour we have planned. More tomorrow.