The "First Wave" Has Departed !!

Video courtesy of Don Moore

We just landed in Detroit.  The absolute shortest part of the trip is over, less than 35 hours to go!!  I couldn't be happier, i absolutely LOVE making this treck to the other side of the world, it may not be a lot of fun getting there, but once you arrive its worth every minute it took to get there.

For those of you who don't know me (count your blessings) you wouldn't know that I don't pay a whole lot of attention to anything that isn't right in front-of-my-face.  There's usually so much going on right-in-front-of-my face that I just don't have time to deal with anything else, like when my flight leaves.... or where my flight is going.... (yeah, I''m being totally serious, just ask my wife).

We've always had each wave of the team fly to Nairobi together so I naturally thought we were going to do the same thing this trip.  This morning I realized via group emails that everyone was going to meet at the Nashville airport at 4:30 pm so the group could mix and match supplies between bags if someone's  bag was overweight - just like we always do.  The only problem with that was that my flight was scheduled to leave 40 minutes before everyone had agreed to arrive at the airport.  

I immediately was taken back to grade school in Iowa where Timmy Plathe and Danny Schroeder were picking players for their team at recess and no one wanted me on their team (yeah, I'm being totally serious again, just ask Timmy or Danny).  Luckily one other member of our team had the same itinerary as me; John from our BioMed department at Vanderbilt.  Apparently John doesn't mind having me on his team.

Actually, I was a little relieved that I ended up going through Detroit because Don Moore made the handy little animated map at the top of this post that he so gracioiusly allowed me to post again this year.  His map has us going through Detroit on the way to Amsterdam and I originally thought we were going through Atlanta (because that's what I heard everyone else saying for the last 3 months) which would have messed up this whole post, so it all worked out in the end.  And for anyone out there that cares, John and I are doing just fine here in Detroit!