The Washington post

Well, it's 7:45AM and I'm in Washington, D.C. I left Windhoek on Thursday (yesterday), May 24 at 1PM, got into Johannesburg a couple of hours later. Flew out of Jo'burg at 5:30PM, arrived in Dakar at midnight for refueling. There, we all had to take all of our carryon baggage out of the overhead compartments and place them on our lap, so they could know what baggage might be being left behind by people disembarking in Senegal. Makes sense, I know, but what a pain for the people who were already asleep! Which didn't include me. I had already watched The Good Shepherd, tried to lie sideways and get some shut-eye but wasn't having any luck with that.

After an hour in Senegal, we took off for the remaining 10 hours of flight to Washington D.C. Amazingly, I actually got about 4 hours of sleep! I had a window seat and there was no-one in the seat next to me so I was able to able to curl up on my side and fit in between the armrests like that. I woke up with a sore hip from the stiffness of the seat cushion so I flipped and did the other hip. That lasted another 2 hours. At that point, having exhausted both my hips, I decided my sleep efforts were done. I think I got as far as I did because of the Advil I took when we stopped in Dakar. I was brewing a nausea-headache combo that was threatening to make the time much worse so I decided to nip it in the bud. I think the pain relief worked pre-emptively, making the hips not hurt so much for the first 2 hours. I tried to watch Apocalypto but couldn't get into it. I played Mahjong on the on-demand screen for quite some time. Then, I watched Bobby. The ending was a surprise for me. I didn't know that 2 political Kennedys had been shot so I figured it was a different kind of movie than it was. Good movie, though. I cried, which was pretty messy since my sinuses are bleeding from the dryness of weather the last couple of weeks. Gotta find a way to deal with that for the next trip.

We board at 8:20AM. The flight is just over 5 hours, I think. I'm a little spaced out right now, even though I hit the first Starbucks I saw after getting through customs. They just offered free tickets for people willing to be bumped (overbooked, of course) but I just can't do that. Not safe. Gotta get home.