I wanted to put your mind at rest, because I know a lot of you are concerned about us since I have not blogged for more than two weeks. I know this because of our many followers, none have written to ask if we are OK. I attribute this to your concern that if you ask the question, the answer might be no, and you would learn of something terrible, having befallen on us, such as having been eaten by lions. No, relax, we are OK. And we are back in Chicago, with our wild animal. (Since drafting this paragraph, I have heard from half a dozen or more of you, so apologies to those who have written.) 
Rather than try to pick up the thread of where my blog ended and report on our daily activities, I want to give you an overview of our travel experience and the thoughts evoked by it. Some of you might not be interested in that and, if that is the case, I suggest that you cover your eyes as you read the remainder of this blog post.
The airport experience. We had a good, long trip of three weeks. Still, the trip was book-ended by getting there and getting back, a saga of some 30 or so hours of travel, each way. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no way to avoid that, the long trek there and back does not enhance the experience.
Simply navigating the airports has become a challenge. They all are laid out differently, directions are often quite poor and distances from entry to the gate are long. I have often thought that we are intentionally assigned the farthest gate, which seems to be roughly halfway to our “final destination” (An unfortunate way of describing the place to which we are going), wherever that might be.
Those of us who have been around for a while, may think back to travel when we were much younger. Going to the airport was itself an exciting experience. In fact, I even remember the days when it would be a neat (and cheap) date, to go with, a boyfriend or girlfriend to the airport to watch planes takeoff.
Of course, that has changed dramatically. First of all, going to the airport has become much more of an everyday experience. Second of all, the experience is significantly altered by all of the security requirements imposed after 9/11 The airports themselves have expanded greatly in size and now, in many places, resemble nothing so much as huge, upscale shopping malls.
Personally, traversing the distance from check-in to the gate has become enough of a challenge that I always request a wheelchair to and from the gate. This helps significantly. In addition to removing the physical effort, in many places, using airport personnel often allows you to skip long lines and get to your gate more quickly. On this trip, with as many different airports as we passed through, the assistance of airport personnel was invaluable.
Gliding through the airport on my wheelchair, I was able to observe other differences, (besides the shopping mall aspect). I was struck by the large number of people who, like me, were utilizing help in getting to the gates. Earlier, I do not recall seeing very many people in wheelchairs, this may have been due largely to the unavailability of wheelchairs to get people to the gates. I wondered what all of those people did in those days. Many of them probably simply did not fly. Others soldiered on and got to their gates, heartier than I am right now. (Or perhaps people in wheelchairs were simply invisible to me back then. I definitely feel an affinity for and sense of camaraderie now with my wheelchair brothers and sisters.) 
On the other end of the spectrum from those utilizing wheelchairs (typically older folks) were families who had four or more young children in tow as they traveled. Managing what we had to deal with, which involved no children, other than our almost 12 year old grandson, Max, I could not imagine how people with all of these little ones managed to get through the maze of the airport. I guess it was a good idea to make parents young.
Another observation was the diversity of people traveling. My recollection, which may be faulty, was that in the olden days airport travel was primarily white folks getting from one place to another. That was decidedly not the case on this trip, although undoubtedly the percentages were affected by the fact that we were traveling internationally and that Africa was our destination.
Travel certainly does not get easier as you age. In addition to the physical ordeal, I find the mental challenges of navigating the system increasingly difficult. I know that as one ages, one is supposed to mellow and meet obstacles more calmly. Somebody forgot to give me that message and so, I find the complexity of navigating airports to be mentally stressful.
So in many ways, this was a tough trip and most likely is our next last adventure travel. Arduous. We took fifteen different flights in three weeks and travelled many hours daily, often 8 hours a day in open jeeps on bumpy, dusty roads. No reason to feel sorry about this likely being our last, though, because we have had an incredible run of travel privileges.
In past trips, photography has been an important element for me. On this trip, I toyed with not taking a camera at all, other than my iPhone. I changed my mind at the last minute and am glad that I did that. I was surprised to find how important photography was to me, after all, and I was glad to have the camera, even if I was taking photos of animals and scenes that I had encountered on prior trips. The camera was something of a security blanket for me. I think I would have been less comfortable without it. .
It was fun to have Max along having his own and first photography experience. We had borrowed a camera from FreshLens Chicago, an organization that Innovation 80 supports, and so Max had exactly the same equipment that I did. In fact, I found that in quite a number of circumstances, though, my iPhone was as good as or better than my regular camera for photography. I particularly found that true in taking video.
We packed relatively lightly, but, even then, took more than we needed to. I was particularly fortunate to pack an extremely helpful spouse, without whom I could not have made it through the three weeks. I’m going to close this first reflection with a photo of one of the lions who did not eat us. There’ll be more photos in my next post.
