Home Again

One last tale about Costa Rica, or rather, the ride home.

I have an issue with my feet, As the podiatrist told me, I have an extra bone embedded in the tendon of my foot arch. A terrible place to have one and every so often, I irritate it and get what you might call pain. When I have pain, I go to icing, drugs and wearing one of those big black boots  and maybe even using a cane.

I brought the boot and cane along with me to Costa Rica, just in case my foot should become inflamed while we are there. The items took up too much suitcase room, so I wore the boot and used the cane while we traveled, a rather nice attention getter, though rather uncomfortable.

In returning home,  we’d planned our stop in Houston very badly, allowing only one hour between flights.  We found ourselves at the end of a line of about a hundred people, all waiting to go through three open customs gates. Well, let me tell you, there were lots of panicky people. Bernie and I panicked for a while, but then settled into the idea that we would miss our flight to Minneapolis and have to hang out in Houston for a time. As our line moved forward, slowly, I was spotted by a custom’s agent. He looked at my boot and cane and asked how many were traveling with me. I pointed to you-know-who and said, “Just him.” He pulled us out of the line and sent us forward to a gate for people like me, all crippled up. “Limp,” Bernie whidpered as we passed the other folks. One man from the crowd said, “My brother has a wheel chair. Maybe I should have borrowed it.” I shrugged and smiled at him, “Maybe you should have.”

Once through customs, we had to get our bags from baggage claim and throw them onto another carrousel. Then one of those passenger transport guys picked us up…rushed us to the train which took us to the correct area…then we had to run for the plane. “I’ll run. You limp,” Bernie said. He arrived at the gate about five minutes before take-off. “Here she comes,” I heard him say. “Good thing,” the official said. “We would have left without you.”

Now, mind you, this was not planned. But it does seem that God has a sense of humor.