Long Day Of Flying

Ottawa to St Vincent

Sunday, July 7^th. LONG DAY OF FLYING

Up and off early for our Air Canada flight to Toronto. A lot of the Caribbean teams are on the same flight. Several of them had issues with overweight luggage and had to shuffle things from bag to bag. Irnice had to put two of her pairs of shoes in my bag. In Toronto we had an hour layover before another Air Canada flight to Bridgetown, Barbados. There we had a two and half hour stop over before our Liat Airlines (they say it stands for: Leave Island Any Time) dash 8 propeller plane to St Vincent (it left a half hour late). It was open seating; I wound up sitting at the front facing backwards. It was only a half hour flight. Upon arrival we were delayed for about an hour going through customs as they were looking in everyone's bag.

When we finally cleared customs and got outside we were met by an entourage from the St Vincent teachers union, including Mr. Jimmy, another man who was the Secretary General of the union and Jane and her son. They loaded us up into a min van and drove us up the island on narrow winding roads to Ken Isles house. He is a world renowned steel band drummer. We were shown around his lovely house and to our rooms. The entourage stayed with us for a short while and we were introduced to a few other people and Ken's wife and children. Really nice warm welcoming people. Ken's wife had prepared a meal for us that was laid out on the counter. It consisted of chicken drumsticks, fish pieces, rice, mac and cheese, plantain, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. They had also stocked the fridge with a variety of drinks and bought us some basic food supplies and toilet paper.

After they all left we enjoyed the meal on the porch overlooking the island. Shortly after that George went off to sleep and Irnice and I stayed up another hour and chatted.