I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, but I had prepared pretty well, so the morning wasn’t too hectic. I only had to wrap up a few loose ends, back up some files, and find a place to cram the last remaining items into one of the bags, and we were off to the airport. Vilma let me drive so that I wouldn’t explode inside the car. I’m not the calmest traveler on the first day of a trip.

At the airport, we wandered around, trying to find some eye shades, and after wandering through several terminals, found a gift shop that sold them, and bought a pair. After that we went to the gate—way too early— and Vilma got out the PowerBook to kill some time. We went over some stuff in Quicken, I showed her some of the utilities, anything to avoid thinking about the month we were about to spend apart. Vilma bought some yogurt and a banana. We sat and stared out the windows. Then the time had come to board.

It was awkward, me trying to show how much I was going to miss her, and she not wanting to make me feel bad for leaving. I guess there wasn’t a good way to part. So I just kissed and hugged her, and turned and walked down the jetway onto the plane.

I lucked out and got the whole center section to myself. Not that it was too important on that leg of the flight, but still, it was good to be able to spread out. They showed “The Scout” on the movie, but I had heard that it was sort of average, and since I had a book to read, I decided to save the $4, and forgo the headphones. I had a sun-dried tomato linguini thing for lunch. Not bad.

We landed in Miami on time, and I sat down at the gate to try to get my modem to work at one of the AT&T phones. I spent the good part of an hour in the attempt, but had no success, so I called Vilma instead. She seemed glad to hear from me, but puzzled about why it took me so long to call. I explained about the modem troubles, and she told me to call my Dad. Apparently he wanted to wish me a good journey. Vilma and I said good-byes again, and I promised to call her whenever I could.

I called my Dad, and later Philip, but they couldn’t offer much help getting my modem to connect. After the calls, I tried again, and this time one of the ideas that Philip suggested worked: typing ATH1 before dialing the numbers with the phone pad. I guess this allows the modem to catch the “ready to connect” signal from CompuServe. I downloaded the messages from my mailbox, including a couple of very lengthy ones from Bruce, but since I really was only interested in the one from Vilma, I had to scroll through lines and lines of political diatribe that Bruce had downloaded from the Internet before I could read hers. Had I given it any thought at all, I could have just skipped Bruce’s messages. But I guess my brain was elsewhere. Anyway, I got Vilma’s message, and it was pretty much what she told me she sent. But after I logged off, I had to call her again to tell her I got it. More good-byes.

By this time it was close to boarding time, so I strolled back to the gate, only to discover that the flight had been pushed back from 11:59 to 12:20. This spelled trouble because I knew that gave me less than 40 minutes to make my connection in Lima. Oh well, no point in getting upset about it, I told myself. This is, after all, an adventure. And as some wise person once said, an adventure is a misfortune properly understood.

But I was hungry, so I strolled through the terminal, trying to find a place to grab a bite, only to find all the little snack bars had closed for the night. I hadn’t eaten in about six hours, so in desperation, I put a dollar in an ice cream vending machine, only to have it eat my dollar. Not knowing if they were going to give us anything to eat before breakfast on the plane, I walked out past the security gate in hopes of finding an open snack bar, and found a small cafeteria-like place in the main terminal. It looked pretty disgusting, sort of like a Woolworth counter for insomniacs, but I found a bagel and cream cheese on the menu, so I ordered that from the old Cuban lady behind the counter. She asked me if I wanted anything to drink, but I said no thanks. The look in her eyes seemed to suggest that she figured I didn’t have enough money, so she talked me into a glass of water, and I accepted. The rest of the people at the snack bar looked like the walking wounded, glumly stuffing chili dogs and day-old cherry pie slices down their throats.

It took forever to get my bagel, and by the time it came, I had to grab it and run back to the gate, where boarding was almost complete. It turned out to be an unnecessary sprint, because we sat at the gate until almost one o’clock, waiting for some people who were arriving on a connecting flight. By now I figured I was sure to miss my connection in Lima, but I knew that Faucett, the airline that was going to carry me to Cuzco, had a later flight, which I hoped I could still make.

As we taxied for take-off, I took solace in the fact that I had the entire center section of the Airbus 300 to myself, and would be able to stretch out during the flight. After we reached cruising altitude, I put on my new eye shades, popped a sleeping pill, and fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until we were almost to Lima.