Home from Panama
Jan. 1st, 2025 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerPanama Travelog #41
Back Home - Wed, 1 Jan 2025. 8am.
I'm posting this Panama blog out of order, (mostly) skipping ahead of the backlog to let people know we've finished our trip. We got home, as in walked through our own front door, last night a few minutes before 10pm.
It had been a long day of travel. We'd been up since 4:30am Panama time, which is 1:30am California time, to catch an early flight. Then our itinerary left us with a long connection in Houston. We could have booked a different flight with a shorter connection time but we concerned that if we cut it too short we could miss our connecting flight if the first flight was delayed or if there was some kind of snafu with immigration & customs checks upon landing at IAH. As it happened, all our flights operated on time and the biggest waits with the immigration-and-customs gantlet were waiting for our checked bags to appear on the conveyor belt and waiting in a slooow, non-PreCheck line to re-clear security. Even so, we would've had plenty of time with a 3 hour connection instead of our almost 7 hours connection.
Earlier this week and up through about noon yesterday we were optimistic that we could join friends for a low-key New Year's Eve celebration after landing. We knew it'd be a long day for us but figured maybe we'd nap enough on our flights to have energy left after arriving home at 10pm. Nope. We realized hours before that, while we were sitting in the United Club lounge at IAH, that we were going to be dragging by the time we got home. "I'm so wiped I'll probably just face-plant on the bed when I get home," I texted our friends.
I didn't literally face-plant in the bed as soon as I got home... though I certainly was tired enough to do so. Instead I stayed up for about 45 minutes to take a shower and unpack about half of our bags. Meanwhile Hawk pulled in a week+ of mail from the mailbox, sorted through it to find the important stuff, then took her own shower. Washing up after flights is important because the bottled air on flights is often lightly perfumed, which bothers us, and because of all the sweat and other crud that accumulates from traveling all day. A quick shower washes that all away and makes it easier to enjoy a good night's sleep.
Back Home - Wed, 1 Jan 2025. 8am.
I'm posting this Panama blog out of order, (mostly) skipping ahead of the backlog to let people know we've finished our trip. We got home, as in walked through our own front door, last night a few minutes before 10pm.
It had been a long day of travel. We'd been up since 4:30am Panama time, which is 1:30am California time, to catch an early flight. Then our itinerary left us with a long connection in Houston. We could have booked a different flight with a shorter connection time but we concerned that if we cut it too short we could miss our connecting flight if the first flight was delayed or if there was some kind of snafu with immigration & customs checks upon landing at IAH. As it happened, all our flights operated on time and the biggest waits with the immigration-and-customs gantlet were waiting for our checked bags to appear on the conveyor belt and waiting in a slooow, non-PreCheck line to re-clear security. Even so, we would've had plenty of time with a 3 hour connection instead of our almost 7 hours connection.
Earlier this week and up through about noon yesterday we were optimistic that we could join friends for a low-key New Year's Eve celebration after landing. We knew it'd be a long day for us but figured maybe we'd nap enough on our flights to have energy left after arriving home at 10pm. Nope. We realized hours before that, while we were sitting in the United Club lounge at IAH, that we were going to be dragging by the time we got home. "I'm so wiped I'll probably just face-plant on the bed when I get home," I texted our friends.
I didn't literally face-plant in the bed as soon as I got home... though I certainly was tired enough to do so. Instead I stayed up for about 45 minutes to take a shower and unpack about half of our bags. Meanwhile Hawk pulled in a week+ of mail from the mailbox, sorted through it to find the important stuff, then took her own shower. Washing up after flights is important because the bottled air on flights is often lightly perfumed, which bothers us, and because of all the sweat and other crud that accumulates from traveling all day. A quick shower washes that all away and makes it easier to enjoy a good night's sleep.
