Visiting the girls

Our twin nieces Bailey and Morgan in the bubbles

4/3/07

Well, we started off with a bang. After a variety of technical issues with laptops, PDA's and mp3 players (imagine that!) we finally watched our last live episode of 24 for a while and got to bed after midnight. Not too late other than having to awake at 5:00 a.m. Brenda took us to the airport and we boarded without incident, anxious to take off at 7:00.

At 8:00 we were getting antsy and by nine we were getting annoyed but Chicago had weather and the captain kept coming on the overhead and blaming the government. We finally took off hoping that we were done with delays having paid our dues and that the fourteen hour flight to Delhi would be smooth.

Cindy's sister Cathy picked us up at O’Hare with her three little girls Morgan, Bailey and MaClain pictured here and took us back to their home which has a kitchen renovation under way (good time for us to invade!)

We had to spend a bit of time on the Internet trying to finalize our hopeful Bhutan trekking itinerary.

Little Sister Mclain partying in Newport

We ended going out for Tapas with Cathy, Rob and the girls and Cindy's brother Dave and ate well (and were graciously treated on top of it). We finished the evening kicking back with probably our last bottle of good red wine for quite some time.

4/4/07

Well we spent most of the morning trying to figure out which of the two itineraries to do in Bhutan. We finally compromised, selecting the shorter trek but adding an additional day to trek to another mountain village (actually Cathy‘s idea). We called Etrade to do the wire transfer which ended up being a bit of a fiasco and had to FAX them authorization. Nothing like waiting till the last minute!

We took the girls to the Rainforest Café (apparently one of their faves) for a late lunch. Believe it or not it was snowing in Chicago and really cold - all the better to juxtapose the coming heat of India. By the time lunch was done, we had to rush to catch the L to the airport. We breezed through check-in and headed for the Admirals Club to take advantage of our questionable purchase of membership there on the way to Bangkok back in August. That's when the proverbial shit hit the fan.

I decided to follow up with Etrade and, long story short, they didn't execute the wire transfer and claimed they couldn't without a notarized fax. Why they didn't tell me this earlier this morning I have no idea. Needless to say I was pissed off. With twenty minutes till our flight boards, we tried in vain to get our broker at another bank. Guess we will have to deal with this from India and hope that the Delhi - Paro tickets are held. The flight itself was long and boring but we were in an exit row so it wasn't to bad. Whoever's brilliant idea it was to enhance AA revenue by charging for beer and wine on a friggin fourteen hour flight should be drawn and quartered.