Dirty, greasy and tired.....and I'm not even there yet.

Flight path; May 3^rd, 11 am, customs and check in. 1 pm flight Ottawa to Toronto. 5 pm flight Toronot to Montreal. 7:45 flight Montreal to Brussels. May 4^th, land in Brussels at 6 am. 12:10 Departure Brussels for Abidjan, Ivory Coast about 7 hours in the air. After an hour and forty five minutes on the ground, depart for Monrovia. Arrive and begin circling

As weather can affect air travel, we circle Roberts Airfield in Monrovia. We then atemp a landing in heavy thunderstorms and at just below 3000 feet, the pilots decide to abort the landing do to heavy rain and standing water on the runway. We circle again. After a few minutes we are diverted to Sierra Leon's Freetown. After landing without incident, we refuel and wait.

Information trickles in. It appears that an Air France plane attempted to land after us. They landed yes, but in the process have wrecked 1100 metres of runway and there plane. Oh and the other 1800 metres in under water. 7 cm we are told.

So, after about and hour and a half on the tarmac in Freetown, we are informed that we will head back to Brussels. So that's about 6 and bit hours back to Brussels. All in all about 18 hours in the same seat on the same plane.

After navigating the Brussels airport, Laurel and I finally made it to the Holiday Inn Brussels Airport and now we wait and I right this little missive. Waiting to see we can fly on Sunday at 12:10, or if the repairs will take longer and it means more like Tuesday. The one lingering question I have and can't get an answer for is: do I get aeroplan points for this?