Plans are for changing.

Ok, so there have been a few slight adjustments made to our plans for this week. Nic left yesterday for Norway (instead of going today and coming back today) so that he could spend some time with the programmers. He still flies back tonight though, which is a good thing. He should land about 8:35 or so and I'll go pick him (and Bob) up at the airport. Tomorrow is trash day here, so I'm trying to get everything clean and in order so that nothing that could potentially be stinky will be left in my house while we are away. Then Thursday I'll pack and get everything ready to go for our journey. I have to admit, I'm not looking forward to the weather. I've become quite accustomed to it being 60 degrees every day. I think I'm going to melt. What's going to be tricky is that the pool for MATE is going to be outdoors this year (with very little sun protection) so I'm really quite worried about getting sunburned. Bob told us a trick that he used when he was doing the IronMan competitions and I think that I'll definitely see if that works. He would take a shower the night before the competition and then immediately lather himself up very liberally with sun screen. That way it would completely soak into the skin. Then the next morning he wouldn't do anything (definitely not shower because it would wash it all away). He said that worked really well and he didn't ever burn when everyone else did because they didn't allow the sunscreen to soak into their skin before getting in the water or sweating. I'll let you know if it works. Anyway- I thought I'd let you guys know our flight stuff so here goes:

Friday, the 20th:
KL 1442 from Aberdeen to Amsterdam- 9:20 am to 12:00 pm
KL 6045 from Amsterdam to Minneapolis- 1:25 pm to 3:20 pm
KL 6185 from Minneapolis to San Diego- 5:25 pm to 7:08 pm
(that's not too bad seeing as it's only 18 hours of travel time, but the layovers are a bit tight)

Tuesday, the 1st to Wednesday,the 2nd:
KL 6186 from San Diego to Minneapolis- 8:45 am to 2:46 pm
KL 6042 from Minneapolis to Amsterdam- 3:15 pm to 7:30 am
KL 1441 from Amsterdam to Aberdeen- 8:10 am to 8:40 am
(I didn't book the flights, a travel agent did (see previous post), I'm not that stupid as to only allow 30 minutes between a flight... I doubt we'll make that one to be honest. Also- note that there are some time changes there, the flight from Amsterdam to Aberdeen isn't really 30 minutes. The total travel time here is 16 hours)

Saturday the 21st, we'll be getting our biometric scans done. Sunday the 22nd, we'll just be enjoying San Diego. Monday the 23rd and Tuesday the 24th we'll be in Los Angeles at the Embassy. Wednesday the 25th we might be at the Embassy some more, but then Wednesday night we'll be at the opening ceremony for MATE. Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th we'll be judging the MATE competition. Saturday the 28th we'll be attending the closing of MATE and the awards ceremony. Sunday the 29th we'll probably hang out with Cletis. Monday the 30th we'll be back at the Embassy if we need to be. That would be our last chance to wrap things up. It's going to be a pretty action packed week.

When the flights were changed the travel agent forgot to change the hotel too, so as of right now we only have hotel rooms for the 24th through the 29th. Hopefully that will all get worked out soon and we'll have a place to sleep the whole time. I'm trying to figure out what we should do on Sunday, the 22nd. I'd love to go to see the seals and sea lions, so maybe we'll go to the Children's Beach in La Jolla. Who knows. Maybe we'll check out the Fisherman's Wharf or go down town in San Diego. We'll just have to go exploring. We'll have a car the whole time, so it should be pretty easy to get around. We'll have most of the day on Saturday the 21st too, as the biometric scans are supposed to take less than 15 minutes each. I'm getting excited.