And so it Begins…

The time has come to bid my homeland goodbye for a while as I depart on our next adventure. As most adventures do these days, mine is starting with a flight. We decided that it would be easier on everyone if we left the kids with the grandparents while Amanda took me to the airport. Who were we kidding? Amanda and I hadn’t made it out of the neighborhood before I asked to go back to the house to say goodbye one last time to my little girls. Leaving the rest of the family behind is absolutely the most difficult aspect of this transition and even though it’s only for three weeks it constitutes the first time we will have been apart for more than 12 hours since Olivia was born. And while I’m not a nervous flier, the thought of something happening between my departure and their arrival had been nagging at the back of my mind for several weeks so back to the house we went for one last embrace! 

Sappiness concluded when Amanda and I started back towards the airport and focused most of our discussion on the things we wanted to do and places we wanted to visit during our three years abroad. There’s still so much unknown to us that it’s a little hard to visualize what our life will be like but we at least know many of the places we want to go so we focused on that and made it to the airport with plenty of time before my flight. Another tearful goodbye with my wife and I was through security and standing at my gate awaiting more boarding time. 

This flight would take me into Heathrow where I would change planes for a short hop into Zurich before my train ride to Buchs, Switzerland. What I didn’t realize is that Amanda had snuck onto the AA website and upgraded my seats to London! 

And not only was it business class but with my flying at the end of the pandemic I also ended up with the entire row to myself! As flights go it was a glorious way to spend 9 hours by myself watching endless movies (I don’t sleep on planes)! 

A real glass on the plane!

Arriving in Heathrow was as I remembered it. Busy! My connecting flight was several miles away in a different terminal but at least I was only dealing with carry-on luggage as I went through UK security and made my way to the next flight. This was a regional commuter that was just under 2 hours and was packed! At this point I had been up for nearly 15 hours and was tired, so I shut my eyes for most of the flight and just listened to the hum of the engines and chatter of other passengers as I willed the flight to arrive in Zurich so I could begin the next stage of travel for my day.