~Conga Line at the 2008 SendOutCards Convention~ photo by Chris Tatro

The 2008 SendOutCards Convention was a blast! I can’t wait to tell you more about it, but right now we’re stuck at the Medford, Oregon Airport. Sad to say, our luggage didn’t make the connection.

Hot wind and smoke blasted us in the face as soon as our feet hit the tarmac. Yea, folks, I said tarmac—this airport let’s you deplane directly onto the runway, come rain or come shine. Last time Chris and I had to run for it as soon as we got off the plane.

Speaking of which, it flew us right by Mount Shasta and Mount Eddy. I swear we could see out neighbor’s silver, metal roof through the haze. That’s about all we could see, though. It was so depressing. I never thought I’d be sad to touch down.

And now you’ll have to excuse me, whilst I check-in with the experts: Real-time hourly data for our monitoring station (Weed, #93)clocks us in at “moderate”, while the smoke map still looks B A D. I can hear people around me saying that there was dry lightning last night and this is the worst the smoke has been all Summer. It’s forecast for tonight, too.

Back to the sad tale of our luggage, though: I want to wait till it gets here, but Chris wants to have it delivered tomorrow. Happy to say, we are waiting. In fact, there’s even a lounge in which we are encouraged to kick-back.

Wow! Third World Countries got nothin’ on us. First of all, it feels like there’s no air in the whole building and it’s 90-something outside without the greenhouse effect. I could swear we’re back on the plane before take-off, trying to adjust those nasty little twist things.

Speaking of which, that was the first time I had ever heard a stewardess announce that no matter how much we “twirled them nothing was gonna happen”. Gee thanks, Heather, for killing the last of our hope.

Wall art in the airport lounge

Uh oh, the lounge itself is sticky dirty. There’s a picture of an American Eagle on the wall—you know, a bust of a Bald Eagle draped in the stars and stripes. (Generally speaking, I like my Eagles wild and free with their feathers showing.) There’s even this microwave with an Out of Order sign on the door.

But wait, I’m changing my mind, folks—Chris just told me there’s free wireless and a plug in for my energy-less computer. Wireless internet covers a multitude of sins. In the Salt Lake Airport, Chris had to pay for a connection. I didn’t know anyone could be so inhospitable. Medford rules!

Moving on. All the airport delays and layovers have forced me to read the Salt Lake City Sunday Paper, compliments of our luxury hotel, at least that’s what we thought till I read the fine print. Oh well, The Salt Lake Tribune has some grrr…eat Olympic stories, but they’ll have to wait.

Yippee, I see our big green bag! Double Yippee, he’s got both!

Happy Tales to be continued,

Laura signing off

p.s. Can’t wait to tell you more about sendoutcards and the Great Printer….