And they're off!

Since Gabe was headed for Vienna on Sunday night, we decided we'd have our "last supper" a little earlier in the day. Really it consisted of Sunday afternoon soup, and a few sandwiches.Sunday afternoon soup is a bit of a tradition that we haven't really been observing all that much here in the Netherlands, and it was certainly a nice thing to have.

Originally Gabe was going to take the train to the airport, and that wouldn't be that much of a hardship, but they were working on the tracks somewhere along the way, and it seemed all the trains were being rerouted through Utrecht. Bad enough if you're coming home, but if there's a plane to catch, that's a different story.

So we hit the road in the car at five.

Fortunately, in keeping with the "Bob's bed and get yer own breakfast" theme, our guests had scrounged up enough food for a later meal in my absence, which worked out for me, since there was pizza left over when I returned at 8:00 p.m.
I had no problem snarfing it down.

If the traffic is permitting, it takes me exactly an hour and half to get to the airport. Allowing for roughly two minutes to punt out any passengers, I can be on the road again and back home in three hours.
This was the case once again on Monday, when I took our visitors back for their return flight to Toronto.
One of the recurring themes at airports seems to be "hurry up and wait", since I got a call from our party later in the day to say their flight had been delayed and wasn't due to depart until some time after five. The time stamp on the photo above is 11:22 a.m.

Such fun hanging around airports, isn't it?

Now, Gabe is coming back from Vienna some time this evening, so you guessed it, I get to go back again tonight. The only stipulation was, I made the suggestion that we stay over night at the Sheridan at the airport and come back in the morning. This is for two reasons: Flights have a nasty habit of being delayed, which means getting back here at some crazy hour, plus it just so happens that it's our wedding anniversary, so I figured we'd spend the night in a hotel.

Depending on how things go, there may very well be a third reason for staying over, although it turned out to be more of a coincidence than anything else, since two more visitors will be in Amsterdam by then, and may very well get a ride back here with us. I won't know that until tomorrow. I'll be keeping my cell phone close at hand.

Meanwhile, I went this morning first to get a haircut and then to pay a visit with our Landlords at their store. I explained in my pidgeon Dutch that we were in fact going to be moving to Vienna, and that I'd have a proper letter for them before the 15th.
If the relocation company actually comes through with a letter in the meanwhile, I didn't want it to come as that much of a "verrassing" (surprise). It was the Mrs. that I was speaking to, and she seemed to take it reasonably well. As best as I understood it, her reaction was that, that's the way it goes with business some times. We chatted a little bit about Vienna, how I have no idea where we'll end up....that kind of thing.

Then I more or less ran out of vocabulary, so that was that.

Although I had the car earlier, the plan was to head back out on the bike (easier to park) but it looks like I'll be dodging the rain. We'll see how that goes.
I do have to fuel the thing up and yes, I've managed to put in the proper fuel at least twice so far since our little unfortunate incident.

Pretty sure we won't be revisiting that little episode ever again.


There's still more laundry to finish up (it's those visitors!) along with a little vacuuming here and there, a couple beds to make and we'll be good to go.