It's 9 a.m. and already he's had a bloody Mary!MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Well, our 5-hour lay-over in Minneapolis/St. Paul didn't start off too bad. We found the Wolfgang Puck Gourmet Express bar where they make a pretty mean Bloody Mary. I've had one. I'll have more.
The flight wasn't bad -- about an hour and 45 minutes. Mary Ann read some, slept some. I did a couple of crossword puzzles, couldn't sleep. Hopefully we'll get some real shut-eye on the next leg -- Minneapolis to Tokyo.
That will be about 12 hours in the air. Thank God for Ambien.
Joe wouldn't let me go to Mall of America during our 5-hour layover! Wahhhhh!
Mary Ann is actually excited about the next leg, the 12-ish-hour flight, because she can finish this great novel she's started reading called "Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle" by
Beverly Bartlett. Although there is one thing that's going to make her put that book down -- I hear they're showing "Pride and Prejudice" on the plane. Mary Ann loves Jane Austen more than almost anyone or anything. She's going to miss Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in this version (she's a BBC version snob) though. I (Joe) will be sleeping then, I sincerely hope.
In the airport in Louisville, we met a nice woman who lives in Louisville and is traveling home to the Phillipines to visit family. Jessie is our new traveling buddy, she'll be with us through Tokyo, then we'll split up.
She's a manager at the Meijer's on Westport Road and is responsible for the great deals on rawhide bones that Bernstein and Stella love to chew on.
Also, on the flight from Louisville, we sat next to John Roush, the president of Centre College. I've talked to him in the past, the last time when the Vice Presidential Debates took place at Centre in 2000. Nice guy. He was traveling to California to see his new granddaughter who was born Monday.
He seemed generally excited about our trip and even was telling others on the plane about what we were going to China for.
Always a salesman, he invited us to visit the campus and bring Lucy with us. Hope she can get into Centre and hope we can afford it if she does make the grade.
We've got another four hours to wait and if my figuring is right, that means another four Bloody Marys. I'll drink the next one in honor of Kirby Puckett. Then off to Tokyo.
