March 11, 2000 - Saturday

It was still dark out by the time I left the house. A new day was dawning on the eastern horizon. The air was chilly but pleasant with the fragrant of spring flowers. I proceeded to the airport on my moped, through the fog shrouded swamp, twisty garden roads, and flat calm bays. It was quiet without other vehicles and their exhausts - it's a beautiful aspect of Bermuda that I haven't seen before. It all went down from there.

After I got to the airport, my plane was delayed for an hour so I wasn't sure if I would make my connecting flight to Miami, especially with the next/last connecting flight full already. The customs officials were not here yet so we had to wait for them to show up. Next stop was the security gate and those people didn't show up yet either so we had to wait again.

At JFK:
Well, it turned out that I did miss my connecting flight by 4 minutes - how annoying. It turned out to be yet another bad flight experience. The flight from JFK to Miami was overbooked so that caused a delay in flying down there. Since I missed the earlier flight, I lost my window seats for the rest of the segments including the Miami to San Jose leg. I was stuck between two fat old men who were sweating profusely and one kept wiping himself with some paper towels and throwing it on the floor.

I was glad to finally land in San Jose and easily passed customs to get outside of the airport. My friend Gilberto picked me up and we drove back to Dave & Rudi's apartment in downtown San Jose. After resting and briefly chatting with them, John and Fabio showed up and we left to go to dinner at El Mundo. Dinner was pleasant as my friends go to know each other a little better and I caught up with them on the latest happenings. We finished up with dinner and headed back home. We were warned about the danger of walking in the streets of San Jose at night, but I felt safe the entire time.